


I've been afraid of changing ('cause I've built my life around you)

by somniatoressinespe



Category: Runaways (Comics), Runaways (TV 2017)
Genre: F/F, I'm so sorry, Jealousy, and much much more, bitchy leslie, it's a fake dating au!!, supporting minorus, voice of truth gert, we have
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-04-05 06:33:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 41,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19043104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somniatoressinespe/pseuds/somniatoressinespe
Summary: “You know you've always wanted to give my mom a coronary,” Nico pitches with a conspiring tone, hand cupping her mouth and a spark in her eyes Karolina likes a bit too much.“I don’t know about that. Your mom kind of adores me.”“I know!” Nico throws her hands in the air with such flair Karolina is half expecting her to break out in a song, “It'd be weird, if you weren’t so damn likeable. Whatever, give your mom a coronary, then.”“That I can get behind.”“Good. Date me.”She chokes on her coffee, barely avoiding a full on spit take by sheer strength of will alone. “What?” she chokes out when she feels like her lungs have gone back to reside in her ribcage instead of wandering around her oesophagus.Nico ignores Karolina's struggle for air with nonchalance and takes her hand in hers kneeling on the kitchen's crumb covered tiled floor. “Karolina Dean, will you date me to piss off our families?"or "karolina ends up dating her best friend, what could go wrong?"





	1. Act I

**Author's Note:**

> back by unpopular demand: me

 

 

There are many truths to Nico Minoru, and Karolina likes to think she knows them all.

She knows Nico looked tough and rough around the edges but was actually one of the most caring people Karolina knew. She knows Nico's favourite drink is an awful mix of six espresso shots- no cream, no sugar- and that she drinks it in three sips always. She knows Nico had wanted to become a fashion designer since they were kids. She knows Nico is her favourite person, and that she's Nico's.

Karolina likes to think she knows herself pretty well, too.

For example, Karolina knows of her complete and utter dislike of waking up in the early morning.

She knows she has the whole sunny thing going on for her and that she screams a 'morning run before kombucha' type of vibe, but a morning person she was not. She liked waking up slowly and preferably late. And usually, her friends respected that.

Usually.

Today was not one of those days, she supposes, because Nico had jumped on her bed at the crack of dawn, shaking her awake without any reserve or thought towards Karolina strict policy about rude awakenings.

“Karolina, wake up!”

“Nope,” she says, turning on her front and away from her, burying her face into her pillow and adding to her list of regrets over ever agreeing to let Nico live with her in the first place.

(Not that she has one. And even if she did it's not ever growing like the one she had with her last college roommate, but still. If the jumping on beds while Karolina is asleep continue she may decide to actually compile one. With bullet points and everything.)

Nico turns her around on her back again, not at all deterred by Karolina grumpy, closed-eye glare when she does so. “Come on, it's important.”

“Nope,” she says again and lets the 'p' pop, shoving her hands away without opening her eyes still.

“I brought coffee and croissants.”

She opens one eye, looking at Nico or more specifically at the promised bag in her hand. She groans as dramatically as she can muster and gets up.

“Okay, but this will wait until after my shower,” she says around a yawn, walking into her bathroom.

“Karolina, it's important.”

“Later!” she calls as she slams the door behind her.

Twenty-five minutes later- she was quick about it, not wanting to torture Nico more than necessary- she enters their kitchen, towel still mussing her half dry- but mostly half wet- hair. She takes the coffee cup from the counter, almost moaning when the hot liquid hits her tongue, and waits for Nico to speak. Only she's just staring at her, pastry halfway to her open mouth, a funny look in her eyes. She snaps her fingers in front of her face twice.

“Nico?”

“Uh?”

“You woke me up at, like, dawn for this. It better be good.”

“Oh yeah, yeah,” Nico says, shaking into herself, “And it was only like forty past eight, get over it.”

Karolina huffs, sitting down in front of her. “So?”

“Want to piss off my parents?”

“Elaborate,” she says as she takes a sip of her coffee.

“I went to breakfast with my mother, because for some reason I still do that when we both know it always ends in either me or her storming off. And she kept making these jabs about my degree and at my love life- acting as if I should be married already or something.”

“Yikes.”

“I know right? She's supposed to support me studying!” Nico says, flaying her hand around so sharply pieces of her pastry fell in a 2-inch radius around her.

“Well, you told her so, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, and she got all 'I just worry about you Nico, Amy is pursuing a smart career choice and has been in a committed relationship for a long time, I don’t want to see you alone when I die'.”

“Like, verbatim?”

“That was the gist of it.”

Karolina sighs. Tina Minoru wasn’t an easy person to deal with and she honestly couldn’t imagine having her as a mother. Then she thinks of her own mother and really they should start a club- 'controlling parents disappointed in your life choices' they could rope in Chase. “So? What are you going to do?”

“You know you've always wanted to give my mom a coronary,” she pitches with a conspiring tone, hand cupping her mouth and a spark in her eyes Karolina likes a bit too much.

“I don’t know about that. Your mom kind of adores me.”

“ _I know_!” Nico throws her hands in the air with such flair Karolina is half expecting her to break out in a song, “It'd be weird, if you weren’t so damn likeable. Whatever, give _your_ mom a coronary, then.”

Karolina considers it with a hum, thinking back to her last conversation with her mom about her choice in college degrees. She remembers a particular choice of words her mother had used to describe her career path that involved both 'starving artist' and 'living under a bridge'. “That I can get behind.”

“Good. Date me.”

She chokes on her coffee, barely avoiding a full on spit take by sheer strength of will alone. “What?” she chokes out when she feels like her lungs have gone back to reside in her ribcage instead of wandering around her oesophagus.

Nico ignores Karolina's struggle for air with nonchalance and takes her hand in hers kneeling on the kitchen's crumb covered tiled floor. “Karolina Dean, will you date me to piss off our families?”

Her mouth falls open.

“I-- I don’t think that's how you can solve the whole unmarried situation, Nico,” she finally manages to utter, because the sight of Nico on her knees before her is somehow short-circuiting all of her synapses at once.

Nico looks at her funny like Karolina was the one being absurd and kneeling in front of her best friend. “I'm not proposing! I'd have at least bought, like, a ring pop for that.”

“Okay, so what are you doing?”

“You know how I broke up with Victor?” Nico says as if she hadn’t just laid a massive bomb on Karolina.

“Hard to forget. You moved in with me on the same day.”

“I may have been rash when I said yes to moving in with him. But whatever. The point is my mom has been trying for months to get me to make up with him. I think the whole dying alone act was for that too, now that I think about it. It's all because of his father.”

“His father?”

“Yeah, he owns this stupid tech company slash empire slash capitalistic hell,” she makes a broad gesture with her hand.

“Okay, and?”

“And I don’t know. It's like she has this dream of uniting the two companies through our marriage or something, and Victor isn’t even on speaking terms with his father so I don’t know how she thought that one up. And I don’t know where Victor stands exactly, but I don’t want to get back with him. And she's going to be even worse when we go down for spring break and--”

“And how does dating _me_ make it better?”

“She stops intruding in my love life and we live happily ever after?”

Karolina shakes her head, wondering for a second if this is all just a very weird dream. “Can you stand up? I can't take you seriously from down there.”

“Yeah, my knees hurt.”

When Nico is on her feet again, Karolina breaks it to her as kindly as she can. “I'm going to be honest, Nico. This seems like a bad idea. Like a very, very bad idea.”

“Why? We're best friends, it's not _that_ unbelievable we fell in love.”

“Yeah, but--”

“And it doesn’t have to be for long, just until after break, and then you're free to keep breaking every girl's heart with your earnest, girl next door act.”

 _She doesn’t do that._ “I don’t do that.”

Nico gives her a lopsided smile, the kind reserved only for Karolina. “You kinda do.”

“I don’t! And I don’t know, Nico. This sounds like a bad rom-com with overused tropes.”

“The kind no one admits watching?”

“Yes.”

“C' mon what do we have to lose?”

 _Everything_ , some part of her wants to scream, _but mostly my peace of mind._ She shrugs, instead.

Now, it has to be said that Karolina knows objectively that this is a mistake- even she is not that oblivious or optimistic about a thing like fake dating your best friend to get back at her mom- but it has also to be said how much Karolina can't for the life of her say no to Nico, or like anyone, ever.

It has become a bit of a problem, really.

Maybe that is worse though, to know something terrible is going to happen because of your actions and doing nothing to stop it. The only thing you can do is watch as the world crashes and burns.

(She's so going to regret this.)

“Sure, I could do much worse than Nico Minoru as my fake-girlfriend.”

“Thank god, because I'd already told my mom we were dating.”

_“You did what?”_

Nico distracts her by launching herself into her arms, whispering a myriad of 'thank you' in her ear while doing so.

It's later when a thought comes to her unbound.

They're both lying on the couch watching some thriller thing Karolina would never watch by herself- or at all, ever, if she could help it- Nico laying almost on top of Karolina. “Why not say Alex, though? Wouldn’t it be more believable if you got back together with him?”

“I-- hadn’t really thought about him. It was a heat of the moment thing.”

“Really?”

Nico doesn’t answer her, she just shrugs her shoulders and stays quiet, turning her body fully towards the screen, her head laying to rest even more against Karolina's chest.

(Will they won't they, they had never played that game well.)

**

Maybe once upon a time, Karolina had let herself think about it.

Just for a moment.

When Nico had broken up with Alex and it had seemed like the true, permanent kind of thing- it hadn’t stuck, lasted barely more than two months, but Karolina had always been a hopeless dreamer- and she had realized she liked girls, only girls, after Shelby Jenkins had kissed her under the bleachers before running off to cheerleading practice- and that too hadn’t stuck, but she wasn’t much heartbroken about it- and maybe the thought of kissing Nico under the bleachers had popped up in her brain once or twice.

Maybe.

But she got over it. Totally over it.

But sometimes she gets lost in the possibility of what-ifs, even if just for a moment.

Because sometimes she catches Nico staring at her for a bit too long, or sees her slip Karolina's favourite candy in the shopping cart when she thinks she's not looking, or finds her curled on Karolina's bed on nights where she's working late. Sometimes Nico asks her to be her fake-girlfriend without even contemplating asking her ex and also best friend.

(She's obviously reading too much into that.)

But Nico's friendship means too much to her to fuck up over some weird remnant of misguided feelings. So she locks that line of thought out of sight deep into her brain and into a box labelled DO NOT OPEN, EVER and keeps watching the FBI woman run after the bad guy all over the states.

After all, it's only a stupid, persistent crush. Right?

**

She doesn’t think much of their agreement until almost a full month later.

Spring break is looming in the background, but still far away enough Karolina isn’t left panicking in her bathroom every night, white-knuckled hands gripping her sink, and a crazy look in her eyes- only that's a lie, because she has been doing that- until one night Nico brings it up while she's cooking them dinner.

(Mushrooms risotto and roasted potatoes, sometimes she likes to fancy it up from ramen and Chinese take out.)

“You know what's weird? My mom keeps sending these supporting texts since I told her I was with you.”

Karolina's hand stills. She turns, disbelieving. “Really? Tina Minoru, supporting?”

“Yeah, I know! Like, listen _'I was talking with Leslie and she told me Karolina loves tulips, you should buy her a bouquet'_ \- as if I don’t know your favourite is a sunflower-” Nico says, and Karolina smiles, pleased, because she's right, “Or this one _'your father and I were wondering if Karolina would like to stay with us when you come down to visit, let me know what she says.'_ She's getting way too excited about us. If I knew dating you would get me her approval, I would have asked you out a long time ago.”

Karolina turns to hide the smirk that would give away her teasing. “I see how it is, I am just a means to an end.”

“Of course.”

“Wasn't the goal of all this pissing off Tina, though?”

“It was. But if it shakes her off my back, I don’t mind either way.”

Karolina hums, understanding Nico's line of thought, and thinking the conversation over she focuses back on cooking.

“We should get our records straight,” Nico continues, though.

“I don’t think there's anything straight between the two of us,” Karolina keeps stirring chuckling at her own terrible joke while Nico groans, she ignores her and puts another spoon of broth in the pot. “But like, on what exactly?”

“Like who made the first move, where we went on our first date, first kiss, that sort of stuff,” Nico says, walking to where Karolina's standing.

“Oh. Sure. And it's obvious it was you.” Karolina asks as she lifts the spoon to Nico's lips.

“Why? More salt.”

“You _clearly_ have a thing for me, after all,” she teases gently, bumping her hip into Nico's.

Nico huffs a laugh. “I would have never had the guts to make a move, let's be honest.”

Karolina shrugs, putting more salt in the mushrooms. “Okay, so we both made a move.”

“Like, simultaneously?”

“Not that hard to believe, if it's us. But I meant, something like we realized we had feelings for each other at the same time and then we kissed or something, I don’t know. I doubt anyone's gonna quiz us on our relationship, Nico.”

“As if Gert could stop herself from being inquisitive for one night.”

“True, but we have nothing to prove. Like, we do. But she doesn’t know that.”

Nico sighs, but acquiesces. “Okay, for how long have we been dating?”

“I'd say like a month or something. And we kept quiet because we didn’t know where it would lead.”

Nico stays quiet at her suggestion, watching her cook in silence. “So, where did we go?”

“What?”

Nico rolls her eyes with something resembling fond exasperation a thin-lipped smile on her face like she did any time Chase said something incredibly dumb or, in this case, Karolina did. “Our first fake date, K. Come on, keep track.”

Karolina shrugs her shoulders again. “I don’t know. How about that Japanese place by the art building?”

“The one we go to with everyone? No. I'd do better if it was for you.”

Karolina's heart does a weird little flutter at her words. She ignores it. “Like what?”

“Like... like stargazing and take out by the Griffith observatory kind of better.”

She smiles at the thought. Nico, Karolina and a blanket on a clear night, take out bags scattered around them and their linked hands pointing out constellations- or making up new ones. Nico's lips inching closer and--

She blushes. “I like that one.”

Nico's eyes search hers for something and then look away, shyly. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Nico claps her hands together, breaking whatever kind of spell had been cast over the two of them. “Okay, so first date and first kiss done. Should we practice?”

“Practice?” she asks, her attention still mostly focused on not burning the risotto.

“Yeah, like kissing and stuff.”

Karolina stops in her tracks, pepper's shaker hovering over the pot. “Kissing?”

“Yeah? It'd be weird if we didn’t hold hands and stuff while we're around others.”

Karolina watches Nico in her peripheral edging closer and closer to her, and for the first time she truly becomes aware of how many inches there were separating them, and how, if they were to kiss, Karolina would have to bend down and Nico would have to tilt her head up and probably stand on her tiptoes, too.

(She wonders if Nico's dark lipstick would stain her lips- her soul- indelibly.)

She shakes her head, trying to clear her mind. “Yes. Of course. Yes. Kissing, I can do that.”

Nico's eyes are on the pot, but Karolina can feel the amusement radiating from her. “So?”

“You want to do it _now?”_

“Yeah? If it's fine with you,” she rushes to add.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” she repeats again dumbly, as Nico gets closer, pepper shaker still in her hands. Nico takes it from her and sets it on the counter and kisses her all in one big stride. It starts easy, just a press of her lips against Nico's. A peck. She can do those.

Then it gets _way_ out of hand.

Nico, apparently, kisses with her whole body, digging her thigh into Karolina's and pushing her against the stove-top, pressing close until she's the only thing Karolina is touching, or can think of touching. Her mouth is hot on hers and it feels so good, Karolina almost lets out a low-pitched moan from the back of her throat.

The smell of something burning makes her come to.

She shouldn’t like this. She shouldn’t _like_ this. She pushes Nico away gently until they break the kiss, leaving both of them panting breathlessly in their kitchen. She moves quickly to pull the risotto off the stove, praying her hard work wasn’t ruined.

She mostly tries to hide her quickening breathing and blown pupils from Nico.

(Karolina did have to bend down, and Nico did have to tilt her head back and stand on her toes. And Karolina almost hadn’t cared about any of the reasons why it was a terrible, horrible idea to keep kissing her until the world burned around them and left them in ashes.)

“Is it salvageable?” Nico sounds as shaken as Karolina feels, and they should call this off while there's still time. They don’t.

“Yeah,” Karolina croaks out, “I don’t think we need to worry much about selling this.”

Nico just hums in response.

**

The reality of it still doesn’t settle in her gut until Karolina's packing to go back home, pushing into one bag clothes, makeup, and her favourite sketchbook- the one with the thick pages and brown leather cover Nico had given to her last Christmas.

She had told her parents the news a week after Nico had told her mother.

It would have been terribly suspicious if she hadn’t, after all, but that phone talk had left such a bitter after-taste in her mouth, Karolina had to soothe it with almost all of their stash of fancy Swiss chocolate they keep in the cupboard over the sink.

Because her parents were _excited_ about it- mostly her father, but Karolina knows which battles are lost without ever being fought, and her mother being happy for her had always been one of those- but also unsurprised by the news, like it was the only conceivable development of her friendship with Nico.

Her dad had even said he had known since they were kids they'd end up together. Kids. And Nico's dad had been happy too, when they had told him over a Skype session, Tina's pixelated, smiling face looming in the back of the screen.

She doesn’t know how to feel about the fact that every parental figure in her life thinks she and Nico would have ended up together for good at some point in their lives.

(She ignores the hidden part of her soul that speeds up her heartbeat at the thought.)

And, okay. Maybe, maybe, she's feeling a bit nervous about this... situation they're in. But anybody would be in her position! Karolina just has to relax, go with the flow, and not think about the kiss she's shared with Nico- or any future ones she might.

“Hey, Karrie, remember to bring your swimsuit! The guys will probably want to go to the pool,” Nico calls out from somewhere in the apartment.

Her mind flashes to when Nico had brought her swimsuit shopping to have an 'honest and accurate opinion', and how she had tripped over herself to be a respectful friend and not to stare at all the skin on display.

(Nico wearing clothes is unbelievably hot. Nico wearing a bikini is a heart-attack inducing hazard.)

She's not going to survive this.

Some half an hour later, their bags are in the trunk of her car and they're an hour away from their show time, and Nico looks skittish. She's avoiding looking straight at Karolina, and the car ride isn't filled with their usual chatter but is drowning instead in her angsty, Goth kid music. Karolina brings the volume down a notch.

“You know, you're the first person I've ever brought home,” she muses out loud trying to coerce a smile out of her.

It works. “Really? What about Xavin?”

“Is it _really_ bringing someone home when your parents basically set you up?”

Nico laughs, but it's a queasy, small thing and Karolina's heart aches. “So I'm the first serious 'girlfriend' after Xavin...” she says, air-quoting the word girlfriend, and Karolina smiles even when that gesture makes her want to grimace. She tries not to think of why.

“More or less,” she says instead, “Why?”

“Nothing. Just...” she stops, shaking her head.

“C' mon. What?”

Nico shrugs, her eyes flying to everywhere but her face, fingers drumming against her thigh in a nervous fashion. “I don’t know. I guess... I've just always wondered.”

Karolina tilts her head in question, eyes straying away from the road for an instant.

“Who could let a girl like you get away, Karolina Dean?”

(She tries her best not to read into that, too.)

When they arrive at the Minoru's, Nico has stopped looking as pale and actually holds Karolina's hand when they knock on the door. It opens not a second later, a pulled together as always Tina Minoru standing in front of the doorway.

“Finally! You visit too little for living only an hour away, Nico. At least your sister has a good excuse for not coming this year, she's going to college at MIT, after all, and being busy studying something serious,” Tina scowl falls away when she notices their joint hands, “Karolina! So glad you could join us. Come in!”

“Thank you for inviting me, Tina.”

“Nonsense. You're always welcomed in our house, Karolina. Now more than ever.”

“Mom. Can we do this inside?”

“Of course. Come in, I've had your bedroom readied. I assumed you two would want to share a room.”

“That-- that won't be necessary!” Nico stammers, a blush creeping from her neck on her face.

“Please, Nico. Let's not fool ourselves. You two have been living together. I was young once too, you know?”

Nico keeps stammering, looking more and more helpless- it's not a common sight, Nico Minoru scrambling words, and it would bring a smile to her lips were it not caused by the assumptions of her and... Karolina wills the blush away and squeezes Nico's hand briefly before taking their suitcases inside.

“Thank you, Tina.”

“Of course. Robert will join us later for dinner, he was called to the office.”

Nico finally seems to recover, taking Karolina's hand again and leading Karolina to the stairs. “Cool, mom. We'll go to my room.”

“Dinner is at six!”

It's kind of weird to be back in Nico's old house. She hadn’t been here in ages. Never had spent much time in this house to begin with, Nico always preferring to hang out either at Karolina's house or outside. Not that Karolina blamed her much for that.

The house is still familiar, though.

She can recognize the fissure in the wall near the hanging pictures from when Chase had tripped and almost cracked his skull against it- he walked around for weeks after with the most hilarious bump on his head- or the stain on the parquet from when they had sneaked a bottle from the wine cellar and Karolina had spilled some trying to open it.

She lets the suitcases fall down in Nico's room with a soft thump.

She takes it all in, the gymnastics and martial arts trophies on the shelves, the huge windows covered by the grey leaves patterned curtains, the red walls and the millions of papers stuck on them- a mix of emo lyrics and poems and some of Karolina's early drawings done on torn out pages of school notebooks and diaries, and pictures of them she can now barely recognize- the years old mess scattered all around every surface, the empty candlesticks and the big canopy bed.

(Every part of Nico laid bare in front of her.)

Nico throws herself on said bed, groaning. “God, I'm so sorry.”

“Why? She was being supportive, or like, trying to be,” she says, but Karolina knows that's not the problem.

Nico sighs. “Yeah, sure. When she wasn’t busy comparing me to Amy.”

And there it is.

She knows Nico doesn’t like being measured up to her sister- and every time someone does it, all she wants to do is hold Nico in her arms and shelter her from her mother's words, from anyone who can't see how special her best friend is on her own.

“I'm sorry,” she whispers and offers the only comfort she can give her, “Wanna nap and cuddle until six?”

Nico nods and Karolina joins her on the bed, opening her arms and waiting for Nico to crawl in. “Okay, come on.”

They're woken up by a knock on the door and the promise of Italian take out.

Dinner is a fairly strange ordeal.

Nico's parents are apparently even more gassed about their relationship that they have let on by texting Nico constantly requesting for updates. They keep expressing their support in the most peculiar ways, and Karolina is torn between feeling amused and creeped out by their enthusiasm.

(She could picture it from Robert, but a smiling and joking Tina is something she could have never imagined in her wildest dreams)

“I have to show you baby pictures!”

“We grew up together, mom. Is that really necessary? Karolina doesn’t need to see me in overalls and pigtails.”

“Nope, I do,” she says at the same time Robert says, “Yes, she does.”

“Karolina!” Nico sounds so betrayed Karolina almost backtracks, but the perspective of cute baby pictures is too palatable to pass on.

“What? You were a cute kid!”

Nico crosses her arms over her chest. “Just wait until we go see your parents. You won't think it funny, then.”

She smirks. “Please, I peaked as a child. I want you to see them.”

“Shut up.”

“Make me.”

“I'm really happy you girls have found each other,” Robert interrupts, standing up and leaving the room, probably going in search of the promised pictures.

“Thanks, dad.”

Tina takes a sip of her red wine, hiding a smile behind it. “We were worried you'd never figure it out. I'm glad you did, I would like to have grandchildren before the time I reach sixty.”

Karolina chokes on her water. She changes topics quickly, incredibly uncomfortable about where the conversation was heading. “How's work?”

“Robert and I have taken these two weeks off, actually. To spend more time with you.”

“Really?”

“Of course, Nico. We do miss you, you know?”

Nico doesn’t say anything in response, but her hand grasps Karolina's under the table tightly and that tells her anything she needs to know. She feels the weird, sudden urge to bring Nico's hand to her lips. She could do it, in theory, after all, they're trying to sell this relationship to Nico's parents. It wouldn’t be weird to do so, not now.

So she does it.

Nico looks surprised, but she's quickly distracted by Robert coming back with a giant red leather covered photo book.

(She totally had to see Nico in overalls and pigtails.)

**

The next day, Karolina wakes up alone in their bed.

She's not surprised. When they sleep together she usually does, Nico not liking staying in bed for more than necessary but zooming off as soon as she's awake. Karolina doesn’t know whether to consider it a blessing or not.

She stirs and goes downstairs to the kitchen for breakfast. Only when she steps around the stairs she hears what sounds like Nico's voice distorted by her angry whispering. She's sitting at the table, face pulled with annoyance and stabbing the eggs in her plate.

Karolina stops and waits for the other person to say something back, but Nico spots her in the doorway and she quiets down.

“She's here now, happy?” Nico says to the other person still out of Karolina's sight.

Then a body barrels into hers. She stumbles back but thankfully stays upright.

“Don't kill her, Molly. Not after how long it took her to grace us with her presence,” a voice snarks in the background, and when Molly finally lets go, she sees Gert standing in the kitchen. A very different looking Gert from the coffee date Gert of two weeks ago.

“Gert! You dyed your hair brown!”

Molly jumps in excited before Gert can reply. “It's beautiful, right? Chase was so surprised! You should have seen him, he looked like a catfish.”

“I can see why,” Karolina says, going inside the kitchen and giving Gert a hug, “You look beautiful.”

Gert playfully swats her away. “I told you already Dean, you're hot and all, but it's never gonna happen. I have a boyfriend.”

She puts a hand on her heart, faking a wounded pride. “You said you were going to leave him!”

“I'm sorry, darling. I love him too much.”

“Can you two stop being ridiculous for ten minutes?” Nico grumbles, and Karolina kisses her cheek in apology before taking a slice of toast from her plate.

She bites the toast, ignoring Nico's affronted look. “What are you doing here? Not that I’m not happy, but I thought you were going to New York this year.”

“We were, but then Chase had to do a thing for his thesis and then we heard the news of the century and decided to postpone.”

Karolina's eyes fly to Nico, confused. “She means me and you getting together,” Nico answers her with an eye roll, before snatching her toast back. She pouts. Nico draws out a long sigh and gives it back to her. She smiles. She finds Gert staring at the exchange with a shit-eating grin, and she rolls her eyes again.

“Don't give me that, Dean. I've been waiting for you two to pull your heads out of your asses long enough for me to be allowed to treat it as a big deal.”

“Sure you have. Well, I’m glad you’re here, despite the early hour.”

Gert rolls her eyes. “Get over yourself, it's eleven o'clock.”

“And they're here to kidnap us.”

“Gently coerce you, actually,” Gert rectifies.

Nico crosses her arms in challenge. “Which is fancy wording for kidnapping.”

“What are you a lawyer? We'll have fun!” Gert waves her off.

“Yeah! Chase and Alex are still at the Hostel, but we came to collect you in the meantime. We're going to the pier!” Molly says, smiling wide and excited and god, Karolina had really missed her.

“We'll let you shower and have breakfast, though, because we're good kidnappers. Take your time. Only don’t actually, because we're already late.”

Karolina rolls her eyes and takes another bite out of Nico's toast.

It's only later after they found the boys waiting for them at the pier, that Gert finally leads the line of interrogation Karolina knew to expect from her since she agreed to this fake relationship with Nico.

She's watching Alex and Chase try to win a teddy bear for Molly at the hammer game, and failing miserably each time, when Gert joins her with a snarky 'boys, right?'.

“I wouldn’t know, actually,” Karolina laughs at Gert's eye roll, “So how have you been?”

“Same old, same old. Living the good life. You, on the other hand,” she says accusingly poking her shoulder with a purple painted fingernail- she's clearly not letting that colour go despite the new hair, “Have been keeping secrets from me on our weekly coffee dates.”

“Uh?” she says, distracted by Molly taking the hammer from the boys and smashing it so hard on the platform the bell rings and almost falls down in the process. She can almost hear the guys' ego crumble to pieces.

Gert slaps her shoulder, bringing her back to reality. “Nico! Why didn’t you tell me? I had to find out from Chase that found out from Alex that found out from Amy! I only got to tell Molly! I'm supposed to be your best friend, Dean.”

“Nico's my best friend,” she points out.

“And your girlfriend. She can't be both, hence I've gone up in ranking,” Gert says matter of factly.

Karolina's lips curl into a half smile. “I'm pretty sure that's not how it goes.”

“Is too.”

“In that case, I pick Molly,” she keeps on teasing.

“Don't be a bitch and spill.”

“We've been together a month, we didn’t tell you because you'd make a big deal out of it like you're doing now. Happy?” Karolina lists off all the points on the bullet list she and Nico had agreed on, and braving Gert's inquisitive eyes, she has never been gladder her best friend had made her come up with them.

Gert looks disappointed at her words. “Those are not the details I want to know, Dean.”

“These are the ones you'll get, Yorkes,” she rebuts easily, “I won't objectify my girlfriend for your own amusement.”

“Damn, you got me through my feminist beliefs,” Gert says, looking quite proud of the fact even through her act, “You're good, Dean, I'll give you that.”

But there's a smirk on her lips when she says it, and Karolina knows she's only managed to avoid the storm for a little while longer.

They spend their day at the pier soaking up the sun, and Karolina can feel laughter and happiness seep into her skin, taking home in between her heart and soul. She tends to forget how much she has missed spending time with all of her friends until they're all together again. Time flies quickly and some hours later they're in Brentwood again, standing in front of a relic from their past.

She's kinda surprised to see Timely Coffee still standing where they left it what feels like an eternity ago. She hadn’t been here since their last year of high school. She had kinda forgotten about it, to be honest. They never had the greatest coffee, but the place was cosy and near Atlas, and that's all they needed at the time when they would curl up over homework together here.

She's the last to place her order, the others already standing with their drinks and looking for a place to sit, and Karolina looks at the secluded corner near the back that used to be their spot with part fondness part longing.

She'd like to sit there again, but it's occupied by a group of fifteen years old curved over their computers. She turns with a sigh, taking her tea from the counter without paying attention to the fidgeting barista who had taken her order and made it, pretending not to notice the reason why he was nervous in the first place.

When she turns again, the teenagers are scrambling away from their spot quickly- looking quite a bit terrified too- and Nico is sitting down on the loveseat with a satisfied smirk.

“Please tell me you didn’t just scare off those poor guys just to sit here,” she tells her as she settles beside her.

Nico smirks and meets her eyes without an ounce of regret. “Okay. I didn’t.”

“Nico...” she says exasperated and fond in equal parts. She sits with a sigh, placing an arm on the backrest- and over Nico, too.

“You looked so disappointed,” Nico defends herself, “What was I supposed to do? Let them stay here?”

“Yeah, Karolina, she was just being a good girlfriend. Cut her some slack,” Molly says jokingly as she plops down on one of the bean bags, cup of coffee slushing dangerously in her hands. Nico winks at Karolina, before accepting Molly's high five.

“It's still crazy how the two of you are together now,” Alex pipes up from the other one.

Karolina tries her best not to feel offended by _that_ remark. “Why?”

Alex shrugs. “I don’t know, I just didn’t really think of it, you know? Which is weird because now that I see it, it's so fucking obvious.”

“I know what you mean! When Gert told me, everything just clicked in place, you know?” Molly says with a grin.

Chase scoffs. “Please, Karolina has been looking at Nico with puppy dog eyes since we were like fifteen.”

“I did not!”

Nico smirks at the news- asshole. “Don't be embarrassed, babe. It's cute.”

She blushes head to toe at the pet name, making all her friends laugh at her expense- assholes. Chase and Gert are the worse out of the five- Chase keeps mouthing the word babe to her over and over, while Gert looks as if she had just discovered the meaning of life and it was the most hilarious one she could have come up with.

“Oh my god, everything is so clear now. Do you remember that time you broke up with that girl you met in your class?”

“Which one?”

“The one from Art History.”

Karolina almost drops her tea on the couch, her whole body snapping up straight when she understands which girl Gert means.

“I don’t know who you're talking about,” she lies through her teeth, shooting Gert with her best attempt of a vanishing glare. Gert just grins back, because she's a maniac with no respect for privacy.

“Yeah, you do,” Chase interjects, “That girl who got so jealous of you and Nico's friendship that she asked you to chose between the two of them.”

Gert laughs, slapping his arm excitedly. “Yeah, that one! God, that was epic.”

“Why?” asks Molly, who thankfully wasn’t in college with them yet when _that_ had happened. Gert looks all too excited to tell that story, and Karolina wishes she could shrink into herself and disappear.

“Okay, so she asks the question right? And by the way, you've never confirmed whether or not you were naked in bed together at the time or not, Karo, and that is a fundamental part of the story,” when Karolina doubles her glare in response, she shrugs and continues narrating one of Karolina's most embarrassing break-ups.

“I'll get the truth out of you one of these days. Whatever. So Karo just looked at her, shrugged and said 'Nico' and when the girl asked her how she could answer so quickly she said, and I'm quoting, 'you should have given me a harder question'.”

Alex whistles. “Damn Karolina, that's savage.”

“It was true, though,” she mumbles into her crossed arms.

“You never told me that's why you broke it off,” Nico gloats, ego obviously pleased by the story.

“Like anyone could tell me to stop hanging out with you.”

Nico turns genuine in an instant smiling up at her, their heads curved to each other. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Nico's smile is the one she only lets out in private.

And it's odd because she's surrounded by people she loves, but only Karolina can bring that smile out of her and the knowledge of that makes her heart skip a beat- and she is too surrounded by people she loves, but only Nico can bring that sort of reaction out of her.

(It's odd, but at the same time, it isn’t. She knows why. She just doesn’t want to acknowledge it. Denial hasn’t failed her yet.)

Gert sighs, breaking their reverie. “God, you two are nauseating together. I regret ever pushing you two together.”

Nico sticks her tongue out. “As if you had any say in us getting together.”

“I think they're sweet.”

“Thank you, Molly.”

“They're saccharine, more like. I’m getting diabetes just from looking at you,” Alex shudders. Nico sticks her tongue out at him too, and Karolina ignores them all and places a kiss on her cheek.

What's really weird is that apart from the occasional peck on the lips, she and Nico are acting exactly the same as they always did. The only thing that has changed is the label with which their friends address them now- and the rush she feels every time someone calls Nico her girlfriend.

But it feels nice, how everyone pairs them off. There's no hesitation, no afterthought. Just the understanding that she and Nico's name are joined together, more so than before. It's Karolina-and-Nico now, or Nico-and-Karolina. She had missed being part of a couple like this if Karolina were to be honest- and for some reason, the fact that it's Nico she's being matched to, feels like a benefit more than a detriment.

**

As she had expected, there's a gala planned for about four days after they arrived.

(It seems their parents can't go a month without flaunting their wealth under the guise of charity.)

Karolina pulls the dress she had brought just in case out and smooths any wrinkle out.

She's really not in a mood to socialize, but at least she has someone to suffer with. She pulls the dress on, only managing to zip the light pink-grey dress- should she have checked with Nico about the colour, so that they matched? Too late now to do anything about it anyway, she guessed- halfway before giving up and goes in search of Nico.

She opens the door of their room without knocking, struggling to hold her dress in place- she _really_ doesn’t want to end up flashing Robert, or worse _Tina._ But maybe the not knocking thing might have been a mistake because it's Nico who ends up almost flashing her.

She can just manage to hear Nico squeak and see her panicked look- and smooth, pearly white skin, tight muscles pulling under it, and... she stops the rest of that train of thought in their tracks- before she's ducking out of view and Karolina slams the door shut.

“Sorry!” she shouts through the door, cheeks aflame.

“It's fine,” Nico shouts back, “You can come in now.”

She pushes the door open again, albeit this time much more reluctantly. “Sorry again. I needed help zipping myself up.”

“Yeah, no problem,” Nico coughs nonchalantly, though her cheeks are a bit red.

She's wearing a black lacy dress. It's sheer- almost see-through, really- over her cleavage, short and tight around her hips. It leaves so little to imagination, Karolina's mouth dries at the sight and her brain straight up stops working for a few seconds. It's so Nico, too, with the fingerless lace gloves and the silver necklace dangling over her collar. She looks beautiful, stunning. She looks... she looks _hot_.

And Karolina is in big trouble.

Nico doesn’t look up as she enters, preoccupied with lacing her very, very high heels, and Karolina already knows she will ditch them about halfway through the night and stand barefoot in the middle of the gala- not because the heels will hurt but because she knows how much it will annoy her mother- because she has done that every single year they've attended one since they turned sixteen.

“Just a sec.”

Karolina turns anyway, exposing her back. A bit later, she hears Nico's footsteps come closer and closer, feels her hot breath against her neck. The slow rising of the zip feels like an eternity, but when it's over Karolina misses the contact instantly.

(She thinks she feels a ghost of a kiss pressed against the nape of her neck, but it's gone the moment she realises it's there.)

“Should have we colour coordinated?” she blurts out, trying to stop her impulsive brain from taking over and doing something terribly stupid.

“What?”

“We're going as a couple. Shouldn’t have we planned to match or something?”

“I'm wearing black? That matches grey.”

“It's not grey.”

Nico rolls her eyes, but there's no bite to it. “Close enough. Besides, it's a gala, Karolina, not a prom.”

“Okay. But if Gert makes a comment, you'll take the blame.”

Nico breathes out a laugh and Karolina's breath gets caught up in her chest. “Sure. Want me to do your make-up?”

“Yeah. Do you want me to braid your hair?”

“Please.”

**

When they step out of the limo, Karolina takes Nico's hand and all but rushes them into the venue, avoiding looking at the paparazzi surrounding the red carpet and screaming horrible rumours to them.

Nico looks ready to go back and fight them so Karolina tugs on her hand. Nico's eyes meet hers, and clear of anger. She sighs. “God, I hate these things.”

“The worst is over, at least.”

Nico looks over her shoulder, her face pulling into a grimace. “Is it?”

“What? Who did you--”

“Good evening, Karolina.”

“See...” she finishes trying her best to school her mouth into a smile and turning to her mother's voice, “Hello, mom.”

“Leslie,” Nico says, positioning herself right by Karolina's side like a soldier ready for the trenches.

“Hello, Nico. When Karolina told me about your new-found relationship I could hardly believe it.”

Nico scold deepens as she crosses her arms. “Really? How come?”

Just as Karolina's mother opens her mouth to answer, her father joins them.

“Hi, dad.”

Frank Dean smiles charmingly, before pulling both girls into a hug. “Hello, girls. How have you been?”

“Very good, Mr. Dean.”

“Please, you haven’t called me that in twenty years, don’t start now.”

“Okay, Frank,” Nico redeems, and her father smiles even wider.

“As I was saying,” her mother starts again, and Nico's glare comes back full force.

Her father intervenes before her mother could finish the sentence. “You know Nico, I think I saw your mother searching for you. Why don’t you two go try and find her?”

Karolina encircles Nico's waist with an arm, tugging her away. “We'll go do that. Bye.”

After they're out of earshot and sight, Karolina lets her arm fall. “That was pleasant, wasn’t it?”

“I know she never liked me much, but that was weirdly cold even for her.”

“It's Leslie Dean, she's always weirdly cold and plastic. At least, when she's not around the press.”

“If you say so. I spotted mom, wish me luck.”

Karolina leans into Nico, leaving a kiss on her cheek- both enjoying the fact she doesn’t need to bend down much due to Nico's vertiginous heels, and at the same time missing their usual height difference. “Good luck.”

Nico ducks her head down, making a valiant attempt at hiding her pink cheeks and disguising her embarrassment, walking quickly over to her family.

“Karolina, hey! Your mother told me you'd be here!” An annoyingly familiar voice calls her before she can follow Nico. She rolls her eyes and lets out a deep sigh, but she turns with her best red carpet smile.

“Vaughn, hi. How have you been?”

“Good! Very good. We've missed you at the studio. Here. I got you a glass of bourbon because you said you liked it once.”

She takes it from him. “Literally once.”

“How are things at Pomona?”

“Good. How are things at the-- set?” she finishes awkwardly.

As Vaughn rambles on about the new movie her parents are churning out, an overwhelming urge to shotgun the glass in her hands makes itself known to Karolina. She has never thought herself a religious person- she wasn’t even that much spiritual, not like Nico anyway- but god if she's not praying for this exchange to be over as soon as possible.

_It'd be rude to leave him standing here, wouldn’t it?_

Her knight in shining armour comes in the shape of one amused looking Gert. She has never been more happy to see her purple glasses.

“Gert! Gosh, I haven’t seen you in forever,” she says, tackling the girl in a hug, half the content of the glass of disgusting alcohol slushing out and onto the pavement. Oops.

“What are you talking about? We saw each other the oth-- oh,” she stops as she sees Vaughn standing behind them, a cross between a puppy and a doormat, and she smirks. “Karolina! It's been too long, old friend. We have to catch up. You don’t mind if I steal her, right?” she directs the last bit to the still present Vaughn, and a part of Karolina feels bad- but it's probably the compulsory heteronormative part still left in her, so she shuts it down.

They live a deject looking Vaughn behind in a blur of excuses and dramatic hugging.

As soon as they're out of his earshot, Karolina sighs. “I owe you a big one.”

Gert waves her off. “What is it with you and guys with lost puppy dog eyes, anyway?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I should upgrade my lesbian aesthetics somehow. Wear a snap-back everywhere I go.”

Gert takes her hand with blatantly fake sorrow. “I don’t think that's black tie approved, babe.”

“Or I could take up the mantel of the purple haired one, now that you've aged out of it.”

“Are you calling me old?”

“Yes,” she smirks.

Gert shoves her hard or at least tries to, and Karolina laughs when the other girl can't move her an inch. Gert huffs. “Must be terrible, being so good looking and thin and pretty...”

She rolls her eyes, smacking Gert playfully. “Don't patronize me, Gert. I am a victim of patriarchal standards of beauty.”

Gert's hand flies to her chest, a dramatic sigh falling out of her lips. “I've taught you so well.”

Karolina rolls her eyes, dragging Gert to where she had spotted Molly, Alex, and Chase talking. As soon as Chase spots her, though, his face gets a funny look.

“Oh, and I hope you know the only reason we held back on the interrogation yesterday was that Nico was there. So, good luck!”

The next thirty minutes pass with her dodging inappropriate questions and wishing Nico was here by her side- but she's still trapped in-between her mother, and father and for once she's _smiling_ with her family and Karolina is not that selfish to call her to her side and ruin that, so she suffers through their friends line of questioning alone.

When she can't stand it anymore, she pours the glass of truly terrible alcohol still in her hand in a flower pot without drawing too much attention to herself, whispering an apology to the plant while doing so, and she uses her lack of drink as an excuse to escape.

She steps around the dancefloor until she's standing in front of the bar. She spots a bottle of vodka in a cart left unattended by the staff, and she's instantly brought back to when she and Nico used to nick a bottle off and escape to the roof to drink it together when the galas got too boring. She smiles at the memories of their past wrongdoings and takes a flute of champagne from the table.

She spots Nico laughing with her family, and then looks at her friends joking around where she left them, and sighs.

“Whoever makes a girl like you sigh, is not worth it.”

“I'm sorry?”

She turns and sees a stunningly beautiful girl, glittering in her red dress, holding an identical flute in her hand and a charming smile on her face- her very, very familiar face for some reason she can't pinpoint.

“I just mean, whoever leaves a girl like you alone at a party, well they don’t know what they're missing.”

Karolina's cheeks flush at the girl's word, heartbeat speeding up painfully at the assumption. “That's-- it's not like that.”

“Oh? I thought I saw you come in with someone.”

“No, yes. I did. We're-- it's complicated.”

The girl makes a show of looking around them and then turning to her with a conspirational expression. “Do tell.”

She smiles, amused. “It's a long story...” she trails off, taking another sip of her champagne, “I'm sorry, I don’t think I've caught your name.”

“Julie Power.”

“Karolina Dean,” she says offering her hand. Julie brings it to her lips kissing it, keeping eye contact the whole time. Her cheeks heat up slightly at the gesture.

“I know. We've met at one of your parents' premières.”

Karolina's eyes widen slightly at the realization, and her smile turns to the Leslie approved one she wears around the Hollywood socialites. “Of course. You helped direct that movie didn’t you? The one about the runaway girl.”

Julie smiles back, though more genuine. “Yes.”

“It was a beautiful movie, really. Did you do anything more since then?”

“Only some indie films, nothing much.”

“Oh, that's nice. Anything I might have seen?”

“Oh! Maybe--” Julie starts grinning with excitement, only to be interrupted by Nico sneaking an arm around Karolina's waist. Her eyes flash at Julie, then touch Karolina.

“Want to dance?” she asks, ignoring completely Julie's presence- which, rude, but not unlike Nico so she brushes it off. Nico gets even closer and starts stroking her hand in distracting circles against the small of her back.

Karolina smiles quizzically at her best friend, and then apologetically at Julie. “I'm sorry I have to go. This literally never happens, I have to make the most of it.”

To Julie's credit, she doesn’t look much annoyed by the interruption, only smiling at Karolina with a wink. “I'm sure I'll catch you again before the night is over. It was nice meeting you again.”

“You too!”

Nico drags her towards the dancefloor decisive, arm still firmly in place on Karolina's waist.

“Who was that?” she asks something off in her voice that makes Karolina pause.

“Julie Power. She worked on one of my parents' movies.”

“She didn’t look much like an actress. She has the name for it, though.”

Karolina laughs despite herself at the small jab. “She isn’t. She's a director. Or assistant director, I guess.”

Nico stays quiet after that. Karolina takes her hand in hers, angling them to mimic the pose of the other dancing couples. They start to sway to the sound of rich people's music.

“What's the matter?”

“Nothing,” Nico shrugs one shoulder, shaking hers too in the process, “Just... don’t you think anyone who would flirt with someone who's obviously taken is kinda... I don’t know trashy?”

“It wasn’t flirting.”

Nico's face is carefully blank, but Karolina can hear the scoff in her voice.“Sure.”

“It wasn’t!” she defends, “And anyway it wasn’t like I would entertain her, even if it was.”

“Why not?”

“I'm here with you, why would I?”

Nico rolls her eyes, but her cheeks stain a pretty pink and her lips are badly trying to suppress a smile, so Karolina counts that as a win.

She's almost a hundred percent sure Nico had come and fetched her only to get her away from Julie. She doesn’t understand _why_ she would do so- her traitorous heart whispers of jealousy, and she stomps it down until it quiets- but Nico has always been too stubborn for her own good and they do end up dancing for real.

“Want to give them a show?” Nico whispers in her ear, stepping even closer to Karolina.

“What?”

“They've been staring at us for like the past twenty minutes.”

Then Nico turns them with a fancy twirl, and she sees her friends watching them attentively- Chase winks and Molly mimics wolf whistling when they catch her looking.

“Sure. What did you have in mind?” Karolina asks, already knowing the answer by the tightening of Nico's arms around her.

“You trust me, right?”

“Always.”

And with that, Nico brings Karolina's lips down on hers.

(Just like the last time, the kiss was like... well, Karolina isn’t really sure what it was like. She thinks she had passed out the moment Nico's lips touched hers, and come to the moment she had pulled away.)

They pull apart when Molly actually wolf whistles, and Nico can't hold the laughter in anymore.

“Good thinking,” Karolina croaks out, her mind still lost in the kiss- Nico is an exceptionally good kisser, who would have known?

The night flies after the first kiss, and it's like a dam has broken because suddenly Nico is everywhere, all at once- she holds her hand, and kisses her cheeks, and hugs her tightly- and Karolina is slowly realizing she might be in over her head.

Moreover, Karolina has found out that being at the centre of Nico's attention is deeply, deeply addicting.

And Karolina is not above admitting that she'd been chasing after her attention since they met- pigtails and overalls and toothy grins- and five years old Nico hadn’t really spared a glance for five years old Karolina, and she had wanted nothing but to impress the other girl. But _this,_ this is completely different.

Her body reacts under Nico's eyes. She's pliant, under Nico's touch. It's as addictive as it is scary.

But it's fine, she's fine. They had always been tactile in their friendship, and Nico is probably only playing it all up for the sake of their cover. The only reason her heart skips every time Nico puts a hand on the small of her back is that she hasn’t been with anyone for a long time and she's a bit touch-starved and that's it.

Kiss after kiss, it gets harder and harder to keep being dishonest with herself.

Nico's fingers brush against the inside of her wrist, and she feels any justification she had come up with fall down like a castle of cards in the wind.

(Nico slips off her heels about three-quarter of the event in, and Karolina smiles when she struggles to plant a kiss on her cheek.)

When they finally manage to escape from the gala, they're exhausted.

So much so Karolina had to practically force Nico into taking her make-up off, and Nico had to help Karolina out of her dress before they finally crashed into bed together, sleep fogging their eyes and blurring every detail.

Her last coherent thought before slipping into unconsciousness is spent to marvel at how well she and Nico fit together.

 


	2. Act II

When Karolina wakes up, the only thing she can feel is warmth.

She's on her back Nico curled into her side still deeply asleep, and everything is warmth. The light streaming through the blinds is pale pinks and purples and lilacs and whites- the night creeping towards the edge of dawn- and she's surprised to find she doesn’t mind being awake this early as much as she usually would.

She watches Nico sleep, her face scrunching up and then relaxing again.

Having Nico curled into her... it feels like waking up from a dream she doesn’t quite remember- details blurry and undefined, but feeling lost in a longing she can't help but understand.

Nico is softer when she's asleep.

Her face freed of her dark makeup and all of her posturing that makes her look about twenty times bigger than she is. She looks younger too, her mouth slightly open and puffing small breaths against Karolina's neck.

She looks... peaceful.

Karolina reaches out, brushing some of Nico's hair back from where it got into her face.

(She wills dawn to rise a little slower, today.)

When she was sixteen, Karolina had decided she wanted to be an artist. Coincidentally, that was also around the time she had realized she was gay, so she had figured she might as well break the two news to her parents together. When she _had_ told her parents though only her father looked excited for her, her mother just watched her with careful eyes- she hadn’t expected a pride parade from Leslie, but still.

The point is, sometime after her mother had sat on her bed and asked her why- she still doesn’t know if her mother had meant why an artist or why a lesbian, she doesn’t ever want to know.

She remembers the confusion she felt at the question, she remembers her mother's face when she had answered 'I just am', she remembers the frustration she felt when she couldn’t find any other words to make her understand.

Her mother had surprised her, though. She just nodded as if her words had made sense to her somewhat, and walked out.

What she had meant to say but couldn’t: it's like asking why I'm breathing. What she had meant to say but couldn’t: it's like an itch behind my skin that can never be scratched. What she had meant to say but couldn’t: how could I _not?_

Maybe that's why her fingers itch to paint Nico in this light.

To carve her in marble would be blasphemy, she believes.

(Stasis is just another word for death, and she couldn’t picture Nico as nothing but alive, alive, alive.)

A crime to freeze her in a single way, when she's so ever-changing under the flickering light of a street-light, or drowned in the reds of a sunset, or when she's like this bathed in the first pale rays of daylight.

She doesn’t want to admit how many pages she's stained trying to capture Nico in a way that would give her justice, but nothing seems quite right in the end. She had never completed one, and all she has are fragments of Nico's body scattered on every piece of paper she owns. Her hands, her nose, her mouth, her black hair pulled in intricate braids.

She had only asked her once to pose for her with the excuse of an assignment for her class. She couldn’t turn it in, in the end.

It had felt too personal, like the baring of her soul to a stranger- she didn’t understand why but she knew that the painting was meant only for them. When Nico had asked about it, she had lied and told her she hadn’t finished it in time. Nico had looked relieved, too.

Still, any picture couldn’t hold a candle to the beauty that is Nico like this- asleep, peaceful, heartbreakingly beautiful- and Karolina's mind is stormed by a million what-ifs.

Nico stirs slightly curling even more in the space in between Karolina's neck and shoulder, and Karolina closes her eyes again letting the sound of Nico's breathing lull her back to sleep.

The second time Karolina awakes, she finds Nico looking at her, propped on her forearm. She must have been very tired if she had stayed in bed even after being awake.

“Morning,” Nico whispers smiling and Karolina can't help but smile back.

“Hey. What time is it?”

“Late, for normal humans. For you, it's early.”

She rolls her eyes. “You got me, I'm an alien.”

“The truth is out at last! I knew you were to weird to be human.”

Karolina rolls her eyes again before a mischievous smile starts creeping on her face. She pushes Nico on the bed with a swift move, and plants herself on top of her, squishing her with her body weight. Nico struggles against her, but Karolina can feel laughter shaking against her chest so she knows she's fine.

Nico punches her shoulder. “Karolina!”

“Uh uh?”

Another push against her shoulder. She lets her body fall even more into Nico's. “Get off.”

“Nope.”

“What do you mean 'nope'?” Nico says affronted, bucking her hips into Karolina's.

She ignores the spike of heat that  _that_ sends to Karolina's core. “I mean nope. You were being mean.”

“I'm sorry.”

“No, you're not.”

Nico sighs. “No, I’m not. Please let me go anyway?”

“Uhm...” Karolina pretends to think about it, tapping a finger on her chin, “No.”

“Pretty please?”

Karolina draws out a long, suffering sigh. “Okay. But you owe me one.”

“Sure, whatever. Get off.”

Karolina obliges.

As soon as she does though, Nico traps her underneath her in retaliation, falling like a boulder on her stomach. Unfortunately for her, Karolina is in no rush to get out of bed so she just shrugs and resigns to being Nico's pillow for a while longer.

“You know, it's fine if you want to get up. I know you don’t like lazying around in bed after you've woken up,” she says after neither of them makes a motion to move.

Nico smiles up at her. “It's fine. I don’t mind being lazy if it's with you.”

That's when Karolina realizes how close they are to each other.

She finds her eyes drawn to Nico's lips. She snaps them back to Nico's eyes, hoping her best friend hadn’t noticed the slip. She licks her suddenly dry lips.

They've been here before- existed in moments like these- and Karolina's usually smart enough to restrain herself.

Today, she's not so sure she'll make a smart choice.

She lets her eyes drop again to Nico's lips so close to hers, it'd be so easy to kiss them. So easy, so tempting, so alluring.

A door slams close downstairs, and Karolina comes to her senses.

She shoots to her feet, shaking off whatever fucked up feeling was coursing through her veins. “I want breakfast.”

Nico's puzzled by her behaviour, she can tell, but says nothing in the end and follows her out of their room and into the kitchen.

They find a yellow post it on the counter. Nico reads it with a blank face, but can't hide the disappointment in her voice. “We're alone until dinner.”

“Why?”

“No matter what is said, in the Minoru's residence work comes first,” Nico says bitterly, and Karolina just wants her to smile and be carefree again.

“Well, we can make a lazy Thursday out of it, if you want?” she proposes, stroking a soothing pattern on Nico's shoulder, “Stay in our PJs and watch a movie...”

Nico pulls a thoughtful face.

“I'll even make pancakes. _And_ we can eat them on the couch because your mom's not here to tell us we can't.”

Finally, Nico's face opens in a smile and Karolina knows she has managed to distract her for the time being. “You had me at pancakes.”

Karolina smiles back, moving around Nico to sort through the ingredients. “Wanna help?”

“We both know that's not wise.”

“You'll have to learn to cook one of these days, Nico. I won't always be here to do it for you.”

Nico waves her hand dismissively. “Please, you're stuck with me forever. I don’t _need_ to know how to cook anything.”

Karolina rolls her eyes, weighing the flour and trying not to think why the thought of Nico always being by her side makes her feel so warm inside.

“Make yourself useful at least. Look into the fridge and see if we have blueberries.”

“Aye, aye captain,” Nico says saluting her sarcastically, and then drops it abruptly looking at Karolina with wide excited eyes, “Can we do chocolate chips, too?”

Karolina chuckles at the sight of the big, bad Goth jumping with excitement for chocolate chips. “Sure.”

**

The lazy day plan is a go.

They have pancakes, enough maple syrup to feed a small army- or just one Molly, but everything is relative in life- and The Princess Bride playing on the screen. Nico had grumbled a bit after Karolina had searched for it on Netflix, saying that they had seen it too many times already, but had stopped as soon as the movie started.

(Karolina knows it's all an act anyway, she remembers being fifteen and dressing up as Princess Buttercup and Nico as her Westley. And it was _Nico's_ idea.)

It's a perfectly lazy Thursday, and Karolina had forgotten how fun those could be. Halfway through the movie, she feels Nico's body sag against hers, asleep. She lowers the volume of the TV and rests her head on top of Nico's, drifting off too.

They wake up later than Karolina had expected, body flushed together on the small couch and a grumbling in their belly that can only be satisfied by one of those burgers they sell on St Vincent boulevard.

She tries to force Nico into some clothes and drag her there, but after witnessing an impressive amount of grumbling about 'being promised a lazy day at home', and how Karolina was a 'dictator for making her dress with proper clothes on a lazy day' she just sighs and drives there alone.

When she comes back to the Minoru's with a bag of burgers- cheeseburger for Nico, veggie patty for herself- and fries in one hand and two milkshakes- chocolate for Karolina, strawberry for Nico- in the other, Nico had already set the table. It'd be a regular Monday in their apartment, were it not for the lit candle in the middle of the table.

For one second Karolina thinks she may have stepped into a parallel universe where she and Nico were _together_ together.

(Great, know she sounds like a preschooler.)

“Why the candle?” she asks making a valiant effort to ignore the myriad of butterflies dancing in her stomach.

Nico shrugs with practised carelessness. “It's romantic.”

“I can see that.”

“C' mon, give me my fries.”

“Now, that's romantic,” she says drily, voice dripping with sarcasm, but passes her the bag anyway.

They devour the burgers with gusto. Karolina steals glances at Nico eating her burger after she finishes her own. It's almost bigger than her face and she's obviously struggling to fit it all in her mouth. The overall picture is a cross between very gross and very endearing.

She smiles.

“What?” Nico asks noticing it.

“Nothing.”

“Weirdo.”

Karolina steals a fry from her plate at the insult, enjoying the affronted noise that that elicits. She knows she has just declared war, and she's ready for it. She's prepared to defend her plate from Nico's incoming counter-attack, but it never comes.

“Thank you,” Nico says instead, baffling her.

She lets out a surprised laugh. “For what?”

“For getting the food, for making me pancakes, for forcing us to take a lazy day. I needed that,” Nico shrugs as she says it, but Karolina knows she means every word.

She puts a hand on Nico's, smiling. “Whatever you need, Nico. What are fake girlfriends for?”

Nico looks away, mumbling under her breath.

“What?” she's the one to asks this time.

Nico just thins her lips cryptically. “Nothing.”

Karolina tilts her head in question, and the only answer she gets is Nico stealing one of her fries. She gasps dramatically stealing one in retaliation, and the war starts. They keep eating in silence until all the fries are stolen, and they can't stand the thought of taking another bite.

She stands up, taking both plates with her. She turns on the sink, letting the water drown her hectic thoughts. Nico's words have been so cryptic. She shakes her head but turns to her to ask her anyway. The question dies on her lips when she finds Nico much closer than anticipated.

She swallows nervously.

Nico's crowds her personal space, pushing Karolina against the counter and sliding her hands up her arms and into her hair. Still, she's not prepared when Nico pushes her down, kissing her. She doesn’t know why exactly Nico's kissing her in an empty house, but it's not like Karolina has any other choice but to kiss her back- she could never dream of pushing her away.

(She wants Nico to press harder and fix her to the earth, and that is terrifying in its own right because she knows, Karolina knows, that Nico is not someone she should do this with.)

They break apart, and Karolina hears the jingle of keys falling into the key holder and the telltale sound of heels clicking away from the kitchen's doorway.

Karolina's mind goes into override trying to connect every dot, and then- “Oh. Your mother was in the doorway. Good thinking.”

She feels disappointment settle in her stomach. Of course, Nico had noticed her mother in the doorway and kissed her for show. Why else would she, if not for keeping up their rouse? It's not like Nico could ever feel anything for her other than friendship.

Right?

Nico looks confused for a second before she hides it behind her usual careful mask and backs away from Karolina's body. “Yep. My mother.”

“You alright?”

“Yep.”

And yeah, she's not. “Okay. You're sure?”

Nico nods and disappears upstairs quickly, leaving Karolina behind to wonder what she said wrong. Unconsciously, her fingers go to touch reverently the spot where Nico's lips had been, her mind committing Nico's touch to memory.

_Oh._

And just like that, she's stuck. Mind caught up in all the things that almost happened between them and never did- all the things that she never let herself think too much about. This isn’t just a stupid, persistent crush.

Karolina loves her.

She _loves_ her. Like actually loves her, the time stopping kind of love, the forever kind of love, the god-you're-so-fucked kind of love.

(How could she not?)

And Karolina had only agreed to this because it was supposed to be fun and because her self preserving skills are basically non-existent when it got to Nico, she had not signed up for uncovering deeply buried unrequited feelings for her best friend.

She backs down until her legs hit the kitchen counter, hands gripping tightly the marble. She tries the breathing exercises her therapist advised until she can stand again without her legs trembling. When she has calmed herself down some more, she follows Nico upstairs.

Nico, who's throwing clothes around in their shared room when she enters.

“What's up?” Karolina says, cringing at her feeble voice and utterly failing at pretending everything is totally fine and normal.

“Chase and Gert are throwing another get-together. I think this time we're going to that club by the pier,” she says it in such a monotone voice, Karolina is worried for half a second that her Nico had been replaced with a brand new Wiz Tech model.

“Oh, I love that one, it's fun!”

“Eh. It's fine.”

“We can kiss goodbye our plans for a lazy day, then,” she tries again, forcing a laugh out and cringing over the word kiss. Her attempt at normalcy doesn’t quite hit the mark, and Nico doesn’t react, apart from a shrug of her shoulders and a muttered 'I guess'.

“Want to match this time?”

It's said like a peace offering, for what peace she doesn’t know. She may never feel peace ever again if Nico continues to avoid her eyes.

Nico finally looks at her. Karolina holds her breath until Nico smiles. “Sure, any chance of dressing Karolina Dean in black must be taken.”

Never has she been so relieved to hear Nico's teasing lilt in her voice. “Or, hear me out, you could wear a _colour_ for once in your life.”

Nico lifts a single finger and opens her mouth to argue but Karolina stops her before she can. “And no, grey doesn’t count as a colour.”  
  
“You're no fun.”

“I'm an art major, and it's my professional opinion you need more colour in your life.”

“You can't play the art major card with a fashion one. Especially when talking about clothes. And why should I, anyway? You have plenty for both of us.”

"Excuse me? I can play the art major card with you. Could you be any more of a sad Goth kid?" Karolina teases her as she sits near the pile of clothes, bumping her shoulder against Nico's. Nico bumps back, and whatever tension was left in the room evaporates.

"Could you be a crunchier hippie?"

"I can certainly try! C' mon," she grins, lifting one of her own summer dresses from the ground, “Yellow?”

“Black,” Nico keeps her voice flat, but Karolina can see the amusement in her eyes.

She plays along some more, reaching for a truly ugly old skirt of hers- military green, fringed and knee length, what was she _thinking?-_ she thought she had lost it years ago but it had been apparently buried somewhere in Nico's wardrobe, instead. “Green?”

Nico's façade cracks, but she persists. “Black.”

“Red?” she asks holding up a crop top with white stripes running through its sides.

Nico smirks and takes a low cut dress from somewhere near Karolina's feet. “Bordeaux.”

“Deal.”

**

It's official.

Nico is acting weird around her. Well. Not weird per se, more like... strange.

It's the little things, but Karolina notices all the same. Like how she catches Nico's cheeks turning red any time they brush hands- which is _not_ helping the whole acting like you're in love thing, by the way- how she avoids holding eye contact with her. It's strange, and Karolina would be lying if she said it didn’t feel significant in some way, but she can't place her finger on why.

And that's driving her insane.

She can't understand why Nico would act so skittish around her- something that had _never_ happened before, she doesn’t know how to deal with Nico pulling away from her arms and her mind is spiralling in a million what-ifs.

(What if the reason is that Nico had realized Karolina's feelings for her? What if she was trying to find a way to let her down easy? What if, what if, what if?)

She may be spiralling a bit.

She only wants it to stop. Karolina's sure that weren’t they pretending to be a couple right now, Nico would straight up ignore her.

And _god_ if Nico makes it hard to ignore her.

She maybe shouldn’t have insisted so much on colour, because Nico is even more stunning than usual in fishnet tights and a red dress- bordeaux, burgundy, scarlet, every shade of the colour is forever ruined for Karolina now.

She'd be perfectly happy to keep staring at her for all night.

“Why are you pining after your own girlfriend?”

She jumps about three feet into the air and turns to face a grinning Chase. “Am not.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“What do you want, Chase?”

“Can't I just want to make conversation with my dearest friend?”

“No.”

“You wound me, Dean.”

Her phone rings out, loud even in the noise surrounding them. She doesn’t think she has ever been gladder to see her mother's name pop up on her screen.

“Sorry, it's my mom. I have to take this,” she says to Chase with her best apologetic smile.

“No worries, Dean, we'll continue this later.”

“No, we won't! Stop being creepy!” she shouts back, backing away from the bar and into the docks.

**

Nico finds her near the docked sailboats half an hour later, just as she's angrily pushing the end call button and considering throwing her phone to the fishes. Karolina is glad her resolution of keeping a distance has fallen away already.

“Are you okay?”

“I'm always okay.”

“Karolina... what happened?” Nico asks, hand hovering in the air between them like she didn’t know whether she was still allowed to touch Karolina so intimately when they weren’t near other people, and Karolina wonders if this will be the rest of their lives after they call this ridiculous farce off.

“Some stupid tabloids got some pictures of the two of us kissing, and my mother went a little ballistic.”

“Why? I thought she was fine with you being gay.”

She kicks an abandoned can of coke, sending it straight into the street. A car drives over it and flattens it to a crisp- it feels appropriate to Karolina's current mood. “Who fucking knows.”

“What did she say?”

“Just the usual shit. It's fine.”

“It shouldn’t be.”

Karolina turns to face her, a bitter laugh on her lips that sounds foreign to her own ears. “Who would have thought that you'd be the idealistic one out of the two of us?”

For a second, she thinks there might be a blush on Nico's cheeks, but Nico cloaks it away before she can even notice it. “It's not idealism.”

“Isn't it?”

“No. I just don’t understand how anyone could look at you, and not be proud.”

And for a second, as Nico gets closer to her until they're barely an inch apart, it seems as if she is about to-- She stops the thought cold. Doesn’t want to keep going with it, wants to stop it in its tracks before it becomes something she can't contain.

She shoves her hands in her pockets and shrugs it all off her like raindrops from a clear sky. “Well, I have enough pride to go around, don’t I?”

“Stop pretending. It's me,” Nico says, pleading eyes burning into hers and burying themselves in Karolina's soul.

She looks away. “I'll be okay. Do you remember when all I wanted was to make my mother proud? I was such a goody two shoes.”

“And what? You're the rebel now?”

“Haven't you heard? I'm a childish girl who doesn’t consider consequences when recklessly kissing her girlfriend in public.”

“I'm sorry.”

“It's fine. At least one of us has succeeded in pissing off their mom.”

“It's not _fine!_ Stop saying that it is.” Nico takes her face into her hands, forcing her gaze down to hers.

“I'm going to be fine,” Karolina amends, her lips contorting in a sad caricature of a smile, “I can take care of myself.”

“No.”

“What do you mean no?”

“No,” Nico says again and surges forward, and Karolina is suddenly engulfed by her best friend's arms. She wraps her arms around her best friend, breathing in her perfume- a mix of flowers, old leather and Karolina's fancy vegan shampoo she kept stealing.

And Karolina loves her.

“You know you can talk to me, too. Right?” she whispers in her hair.

Nico is the one pulling away this time, a distorted smile on her lips. “I know. We could start a club.”

“Bitchy mothers and how to survive them?”

“Why? You know how to survive them?” Nico snarks, startling a laugh out of her.

She doesn’t answer her. She just lets Nico sag against her body and holds her a bit tighter cursing whichever god was looking over them for having sawn such a hard fate for them. If holding Nico and picking fights with gods is the only comfort she could bring her, Karolina will do so willingly.

(They stay folded into each other for what feels like endless hours, the myriad of stars looking upon them quiet and Karolina's love kept silent and tucked close in her heart.)

“You're so easy,” she hears Nico whisper in wonder.

“ _Excuse me?_ ” she pushes her away slightly, laughter seeping through the fake indignation like marmalade.

Nico breaks the hug, blushing a pretty pink. “Not like that! I just mean-- you're easy to be with. I feel more at ease with you than with anyone else.”

“I know. I do, too, when I'm with you,” she says letting all pretence fall down, as she pulls her in again burying Nico against her chest.

Sometimes she forgets that Nico is that much shorter than her- she's always standing as if she were four inches taller than she actually is, as if the whole world was too small to contain her- and sometimes Karolina believed it was. So she's often caught off guard when Nico snuggled against her chest like this, and she'd be surprised of how easy it was to wrap her arms around her frame, how simple to rest her head on top of hers.

Only Nico seems to be at her limit of hugs for the day because she releases Karolina out of her hold after a while. “I'm going back inside, coming?”

Karolina shakes her head. “I want to stay a bit longer. I missed the ocean.”

“Okay,” she says pressing a kiss to the underside of Karolina's jaw, and Karolina opens her arms and lets her go.

She watches her take a few steps, before turning in her tracks while slipping off her studded black leather jacket.

“Here. It's getting cold, and you only have a crop top on. It's a furnace inside, anyway,” she says through a mask of nonchalance handing it to Karolina- she knows better than to fall for it, but who is she to judge when she's playing the same game.

“Sure, thanks,” she shrugs just as inconsequential.

And that's what this whole act has been since it'd started two weeks ago: a game of pretend.

Pretending that every lingering touch didn’t have a meaning beyond what was carefully presented. Pretending Karolina's heart didn’t skip a beat with each kiss. Pretending their friendship hadn't always been about five different layers of meaning tucked into each other like a waterfall.

She puts it on, despite the fact it's about two sizes too small and the sleeves are way too short and don’t even fall to cover her wrists- but it screams Nico and smells like her, too, so she couldn’t care less.

She flips the collar and brushes her hair out of the jacket. Nico smiles satisfied and goes back inside the bar. Karolina watches her, her heart aching at each step screaming to her legs to follow her.

She wills them to stay put and keeps staring at the ocean instead, trying to make sense of the slow waves crashing against the pier and the million thoughts in her head.

(The only meaning she can find is her heartbeat drumming in time with the rolling of the ocean, whispering Nico's name against her ribcage.)

When she comes back inside, it's a few minutes before she manages to locate Nico in the bar- now even more packed than before. She spots her near the back, just as she's sitting at the table her friends had claimed as theirs. She turns to the counter and orders them drinks, smiling at the pretty bartender behind it.

When she reaches their table Nico is no longer sitting alone, though, Victor Mancha slouching handsomely near her.

The smile falls off her face instantly.

Nico had said she didn’t know where Victor stood on the two of them getting back together, but looking at him now, cosying up with Nico on the narrow leather couch, Karolina has a pretty clear idea on what he's thinking. She feels dread settle in the space between her guts and her heart, swirling unpleasantly around like two eagles scratching at her liver.

She's going to be sick.

Nico spots her as she's debating the pro and cons of walking over to them. The choice is made for her when Nico smiles and waves her over. She doesn’t want to confront Victor, but it'd be suspicious if she backed down now. She takes a deep breath and plasters a smile on.

“Hey, Victor. What's up?”

“Dean! I’m good, I’m good. What about you?”

She tries her best to keep her smile genuine, sitting down and handing Nico her drink. Unfortunately, sitting down also means Nico scooting closer to Victor to make space. “Fine. How do you know about this place?”

“Nico always spoke so well of it, I thought I could come to check it out tonight.”

“Small world, uh?”

“Yes.”

_Well, this is awkward._

She rubs the back of her neck, black leather straining against her movement. Victor's eyes fall on her jacket, and she can almost make out the gears turn in his brain. Good. “So, have you... invented something revolutionary recently?”

Victor laughs like she had just said the most hilarious thing ever said by man- or woman. “No, not yet. What about you, created the next modern art masterpiece?”

“No, not yet.”

(The last thing she had drawn was Nico's sleeping face. From memory- she did not actually draw Nico while she slept. She's not reached that level of creepiness, yet.)

Conversation grows from there. Stunted, but a conversation nonetheless. Thankfully Gert and Alex join them, followed not long after by Molly and Chase, and they fall in a kind of normalcy- actually it feels like when Nico hadn’t broken up with Victor yet.

And that's the whole fucking problem, isn’t it?

She tries her best to react to things in the way she normally would, but it's almost impossible to ignore the way Victor looks at Nico- it's the same way she looks at her, after all. The turmoil of feelings swirling in her brain would be enough to satisfy the energy demand of Los Angeles.

What makes it all worse is that she knows she has no right to feel this way.

She and Nico are just pretending, and no matter what misguided jealousy she feels, no matter her own feelings on the matter of pretending, she has no claim to Nico like this.

(It'd be wrong even if she had.)

But Victor should back off anyway.

Not only because to him they're not faking, but also because Nico had broken up with him and her feelings hadn't changed- not that she knew of at least. She glares at the back of Victor's head, maybe Nico had been right- people who flirted with taken girls were trashy.

Nico laughs at something he says, head tilted back and happy, and maybe it's Karolina who should back off.

She downs the almost full drink in her hand and excuses herself to go buy another.

She's a quarter of the way through the dancefloor when she falls victim to Chase and Gert's meddling again- god, she almost regrets pushing the two together back in high school. She's pushed by the two of them and a laughing Molly right into Nico's arms.

They fall together, chest to chest.

Nico smiles and takes her hand. The music changes to a slow dance, and she's sure Alex- who had disappeared for a while now that she thinks about it- had gone to tip the DJ.

Her friends were too much.

“Hey.”

“Hi,” Nico puts her arms behind Karolina's neck, drawing her close with a grin, “Never pegged you for the jealous type, I have to say.”

Karolina splutters. “That wasn’t jealousy. I was just--” she trails off, looking for the right word.

“Jealous,” Nico completes her sentence before she can think of a way to end it.

“Was not!” she defends the lie so loud, Nico laughs in her face- rude.

“Don't worry, you come off more like a kicked puppy than a controlling bastard.”

“I'm not a puppy.”

“You're right. You're more like--”

Karolina rolls her eyes, but she can't keep at it for long. She tugs at Nico's waist with purpose, bringing her closer and cutting off whatever remark she was about to spout. “You're doing a lot of dancing lately, for someone who supposedly hates it.”

Nico smiles knowingly but lets her get away with changing the subject. “Well, you like to. I'd be a terrible girlfriend if I were to make you dance alone.”

“Would you be?” she asks coyly.

“Yes, and there's a girl at the counter that's been drooling all over you since we stepped in. Wouldn’t want her to get any ideas if she sees you dancing alone.”

“And which weird ideas would she get?”

“That you're here alone.”

“Now, who's the jealous one?”

Nico draws her in slowly, one hand sliding to the base of her neck and the other to the small of her back, until Nico's body is the only thing she can think of touching. The grin she wears is almost feral, and Karolina barely resists the urge to kiss it off her face.

“Oh, I’m definitely jealous, baby. I told you, I don’t know how someone could let a girl like you go. And I don’t intend to find out.”

Then she steps on her tiptoes and leaves a bruising kiss against her lips. Karolina's arms wrap around Nico's waist, and she kisses her back.

And well, by the look of things, Karolina may not survive the night if Nico keeps this up.

**

It's a game of cat and mouse this fake dating business, Karolina has come to figure out.

Nico would push her and she could either push back or give in, toying each day with the line between real and fake. Some days Nico is bolder and so Karolina is too, some others she barely knows what to do with herself.

Today is one of them.

Two days after the club, she wakes up to a string of messages from Molly that consist of only the word pool party followed by a thousand emoticons and exclamation points. And who is she to deny Molly a pool party?

So, they're going to stay at Chase's house for the time being. Saturday is only for them six, Molly had said, but on Sunday they're going all out with people and alcohol and music. She honestly doesn’t know what to pack in her and Nico's joint suitcase, throwing in clothes at random while Nico glares at her and makes an honourable effort to fold neatly every item Karolina tosses in the bag.

Okay, maybe Karolina is acting like a child a little.

She just doesn’t know how to act around Nico when they're alone anymore.

All the lines she draws, she draws in the sand. They all end up either being crossed or smudged so much it's like they were never there. And she knows thing would only get worse when they would be in front of their friends.

She's half dreading Sunday, and full on regretting ever telling Nico to buy the black bikini she's holding right now.

(If this fake dating business really is a game, it's one of the most dangerous Karolina has played yet.)

When they arrive at Chase's house, they find all of their friends already in the pool. As soon as Chase sees her, he leaps out of the pool and gives her a wet hug, soaking through the front of her blue jumpsuit.

Karolina is suddenly very glad she's already wearing her swimsuit.

“Chase?”

Chase doesn't pull away from her, but she can hear the mirth in his voice when he answers and she knows there's a shit eating grin on his face right now. “Yes?”

“I'm giving you a three seconds head start, use it well.”

Chase startles away from the hug and recoils at the murderous glint in her eyes, before zooming off to jump in the pool again.

She takes off her jumpsuit, hands it to Nico who sends her off with a kiss on the cheek and goes to avenge her honour.

She jumps into the pool after him, splashing Alex and Molly while doing so. Alex lets out an offended yelp but Molly cheers her on while she tries to dunk Chase underwater. He pulls her down with him, and she kicks him until he lets go.

“Karolina! Please don’t kill my boyfriend!”

She jumps on Chase's shoulders with all of her weight, sinking him deep into the water. He re-emerges with a gasp.

“Your suggestion is duly noted,” she says to Gert with a wink, before dunking him some more.

After Chase calls uncle and she was satisfied with his punishment, she retreats back to the side of the pool near Nico- who has shed her shorts but remains in her T-shirt, and Karolina is both disappointed and thankful for small blessing. She rests her back against her legs with a sigh.

“How was your battle?”

She opens her eyes and finds her face closer to Nico's face than she expected. She licks her lips distracted by the sight of Nico's lips so close to hers, before winking up at her. “The enemy has been defeated, my lady.”

Nico huffs a small laugh, nudging her with her legs. “Shouldn't you be the princess in this relationship?”

“I am obviously your faithful knight on a quest to win your love,” Karolina says as she turns, leaning on her knees with one arm and with the other shielding her eyes from the sun- Nico resembles the sun in that way, impossible to look directly at without blinding yourself with its beauty.

"And what exactly would you do to win my love?"

She's about to answer her when a voice interrupts them.

“If you two have stopped being gross, I need a partner for chicken.”

Karolina turns to Molly with a smile, before twisting back to look at Nico. “May I be blessed by your favour, my lady?”

Nico splashes her rolling her eyes, but there's a smile hidden in the corner of her mouth. “Idiot.”

Karolina searches in the meanders of her memory for her eighth grade English class' curriculum. She puts a hand over her heart with a hopefully charming grin.

“Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall s--” she starts to recite before being cut off by another splash sent straight to her open mouth, this time by Molly. She chokes, coughing up water and trying to recover her dignity. Nico's laugh sends chills down her spine.

“Rude!”

“C' mon, Romeo.”

“It was Juliet's part, actually.”

“Oh my god, just stop being freaking gross and lift me on your shoulders.”

“Language,” she scolds Molly jokingly, but she bends down to let her climb on her shoulders, anyway.

 

They win some rounds- Molly had always been freakishly strong- but Karolina grows soon tired of splashing around with Molly, so she throws her off her shoulders laughing at her indignant shouts and lifts herself up and out of the pool.

“Do y'all want anything from the kitchen?”

She's met with a chorus of 'no, thank you'.

She's about to walk away when Nico speaks up. “Wait, I'll come with you.”

The small kitchen near the pool is cool in comparison to the hot sun outside, she withholds a shiver as she opens the fridge. She sees Nico jumping up on the kitchen island from the corner of her eye. She takes a coke for herself before offering one to Nico, who shakes her head.

Now that she has gotten out of her T-shirt, she looks ready to hit some cool, punk beach party, with the straps of her bikini top crossing over her chest in the shape of a pentagram. Karolina's eyes fall unintentionally to one of the tips of the star, that dips deep into Nico's cleavage. A breath gets caught in her chest.

She turns in haste towards the fridge. “You want something else?”

“I didn’t want anything at all,” she shrugs, kicking her feet disinterestedly.

Karolina stops her search for a bottle opener, turning to look at Nico. “Why did you come with me, then?”

“Got tired of Alex's attempts to push me into the water. And I wanted to spend some time with you.”

Karolina doesn’t even try to hide her pleased smile, opening the bottle with a satisfying fizz.

She extends her hand to Nico. “Come on, then. We'll go sit by the pool and I'll protect you from Alex if he tries anything.”

Nico laughs and hops down the counter, taking her hand.

They're almost out of the kitchen when she spots a dot of black on Nico's cheek. She stops Nico with the hand she's still holding.

“What?” Nico whispers.

She reaches out and brushes it out of her cheek softly. “Eyelash. Make a wish.”

She doesn’t know whether Nico says something back, or if she's standing as still as Karolina is. She's too busy dealing with the notion of her own pounding heartbeat, her probably pink cheeks, her hand trembling against Nico's cheek.

She wants to kiss her, but there's no excuse to do so; no parent watching them over their shoulder, no friends to impress, no unwanted advances to ward off. It's just them and Karolina's quivering breaths, and her overwhelming desire to press her lips against Nico's, to breathe the same air as her and get high on Nico's lips.

It's not enough.

(How could it ever be enough now that she knows how her lips taste?)

In another world, another time, Karolina wouldn't need the excuse of eyelashes to cup Nico's cheek, wouldn’t need any excuse at all to hold her against her, wouldn’t need anything but Nico's hand in hers.

In another world, another time, she would reach out and brush a stray hair from Nico's brow, she would stare into her doe eyes, and she would bend down and kiss her- not because of potential witnesses but in spite of them.

In another world, another time, Nico would let her hold her, would chase her lips back, would kiss her again and again and again.

In this world, this time, Karolina lets go of Nico's cheek and takes a step back with a smile.

(In this world, this time, Nico lets her.)

As soon as Nico turns away, she shakes her hand until the tingling sensation stops.

She barely restrains the groan of frustration begging to escape her throat. And yet. Nico's eyes had lingered on her mouth too, her hands had gripped her hips like a lifeline, her breaths coming out ragged.

It had to mean something. It had to.

She follows Nico and sits beside her on the poolside, swinging her feet in the cool water. They're watching their friends from afar shoulder to shoulder, when Chase picks Gert up and brings her in the pool with him in between screaming laughter. Gert resurfaces spluttering and starts splashing Chase while shouting some pretty gruesome threats- but there's no real bite to them, only love.

He kisses her and Nico sighs softly beside her. “I've never had anything like that.”

“I had a hunch Victor hadn’t been the love of your life, but I thought at least Alex had made the cut,” she jokes bumping her shoulder lightly.

“We were-- it was never like _that._ Like what Chase and Gert have,” Nico hesitates, looking away from her and Karolina knows what's going to leave her lips before she says it, “Like what you and Xavin had.”

And she gets how Nico could think that, hell she thought the same thing just three weeks ago. But she had come to the slow realization that what she and Xavin had- no matter how important their relationship was for Karolina at the time- was always undermined by what she felt for Nico, even when Karolina herself didn’t know about her own feelings.

But know she understands.

(Her love for Nico is another truth, another fixed star.)

“Me and Xavin weren’t like that either, I think.”

Nico's head whips back in surprise.

Her eyes are searching, and Karolina resists the urge to look away.

Since their friendship started, they had been open books with each other. She doesn’t know if the reason why was because that's how best friends should be, or if it's because she had always found it difficult to hide anything from her. It always felt like Nico knew more about her that Karolina did about herself.

This time though, she doesn’t think Nico would like what thoughts are floating around in her brain, so she tries her hardest to steel her face into a semblance of normalcy.

Judging by Nico's expression, it doesn’t work very well.

“Well, it ended didn’t it?” she tries to defend.

“That doesn’t mean it wasn’t real,” Nico says full of self-righteousness- and Karolina knows she shouldn’t be focusing on this exactly, but Nico's so _cute_ when her protective streak shines through.

“It ended all the same.”

Nico stays quiet for a long time, so long Karolina thinks the conversation over. Until she speaks again. “You never told me why.”

She kicks a wave in Nico's direction. “Why what?”

“Why you two broke up. If we're being honest, I always thought you were going to marry each other.”

Karolina laughs at the irony of it and Nico looks at her like she's mad for doing so. Maybe she is a little bit. “Sorry, it's that Xavin thought so, too.”

Nico's brows scrunch up, adorably confused. “What do you mean?”

“They proposed to me. I said no.”

“ _What?_ ”

“They proposed to--” she tries to repeat only to be interrupted by Nico's hand on her arm.

“Yeah, no. I got that part. Why did you say no?”

“We were _seventeen!_ I wasn’t ready, and neither were them no matter what they said. Also, they were going away for college, it wouldn’t have worked. I wanted to stay here.”

The 'with you' goes unsaid, but they can both hear it hanging over their heads like a sword of Damocles.

“Karolina... why did you never say anything?”

Karolina turns away and looks at Chase lifting Gert up in the water. They look so happy. “I didn’t think it was important, at the time.”

“Whatever you feel is important.”

Karolina smiles at Nico's fierce protectiveness of her. “No, I meant the reason why we broke up. Maybe if they had stuck around afterwards, I-- I don’t know. We were so young, I couldn’t imagine growing old together, couldn’t think of it with it feeling solid, you know? But I’m over it.”

She shakes her head because it's not important anymore, not now.

“I'm sorry,” Nico says anyway reaching out and taking her hand in hers, and Karolina can barely breathe.

 _I love you_ , she wants to say, but her lungs stop working and she's left choking on unsaid words, unexpressed feelings, unspoken emotions. _I love you,_ she wants to say, but Nico releases her hand, the moment is gone, and she swallows her words.

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For listening,” she says, and bends down to leave a kiss against her cheek.

She stands up and wraps herself in a towel walking back inside, but not before hearing Nico breathe out an 'any time.'

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, you might have noticed the chapter number going up. turns out i can't phisically shut up and now the one shot become two shot became a three shot. 
> 
> exam session is a bitch, so next chapter might be a little late. or not, if i keep being irresponsible and writing this instead of studying.
> 
> thank you for any comments and kudos, they bring me joy in a world of stupid tests and exams.
> 
> cheers!


	3. Act III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> karolina is a bitch that keeps hammering fake into nico's head

Sunday comes around much faster than Karolina would have liked.

She wakes up in Chase's ginormous guest room's bed alone, and she doesn’t know whether to consider that a blessing or not.

Lately, her feelings had started to grow more and more- like the mere awareness of them had made them that much more unbearable to carry silently in her soul, while at the same time growing more and more hopeful that those feelings aren't as unrequited as Karolina believes them.

She shakes her head and gets out of the bed with a huff, heading towards the bathroom.

She lets the water run hot while she undresses before jumping into the stream. She relishes the hot water against her skin, letting her forehead drop against the cold white tiled wall.

She starts making a list of sorts in her head, piling up the reasons why Nico could actually be into her. She comes up with the three main ones- the three that leave her up and wondering at night while Nico sleeps by her side.

One: Nico keeps kissing her, even when there's no apparent good reason to do so- not only at parties, or when they're near their parents, but also when a girl gets too close to Karolina for Nico's liking.

Two: Nico doesn’t smile to anyone else as she does to Karolina- with only the edge of her mouth curling up and showing just one dimple, and with that twinkle in her eyes that screams of fondness.

Three: Nico sometimes looks at her while she thinks Karolina's not paying attention to her- which is a ridiculous notion in itself, because she doesn’t think it's physically possible for Karolina to not constantly pay attention to her- but Nico looks at her when she's not looking and it fills Karolina with hope.

(Nico looks at her the same way Karolina herself looks at her- she looks at her and she knows, she knows, that if Nico were to look back, she'd die then and there, but she also knows she would die anyway if Nico weren’t to turn to her.)

Unfortunately, there are also a lot of reasons why Nico could never be into her.

One: Nico has never been shy in her pursuits of romance- she had been the one to ask Alex out, and Victor, and that girl from her design class- so if she _was_ into Karolina, she would have said something by now.

Two: She's the farthest thing from Nico's type if she's considering said exes, all a cross of nerd and cool and rebellious, and let's be honest she and Nico are in totally different leagues. It's like Karolina was one of those county fair rides- the one that goes kinda slow, the one without any death rolls, the one that kids can ride alone- and Nico was all of Six Flags.

Three: Nico had been the one to suggest they entered this fake relationship to get her mother off her back, and who would ask their crush to fake date them? It's kind of hypocritical reasoning considering the fact Karolina had _agreed_ to fake dating her crush, but she's always been more than a bit self-destructive, so she doesn’t think it counts.

A million variables and only one thing's for sure: she's building herself up for heartbreak.

She stands under the jet until the water goes to lukewarm to cold. She gets out of the shower when she can't stand the icy water anymore, wrapping herself in a towel before braving the walk back to their room.

She sits on the bed, not caring for the wet indent she's leaving on the sheets, and opens her sketchbook, looking at the snippets of Nico sprinkled inside.

She's tracing one of her latest drawings with a finger, careful not to smudge it, when the door shoots open with a slam. She closes the book with a panicked snap, head shooting up to see Nico staring at her with a curious look in her eyes.

She furrows her brows. “Hey, everything good?”

“Yes, yup. Great. What's up?” Karolina nods, throwing the closed sketchbook across the bed.

_Nice. Real smooth, Dean._

Nico keeps squinting at her, but she lets it go when Karolina doesn’t budge. “Nothing. Just wanted to see if you were finally awake.”

“Alex was annoying you, wasn’t he?” Karolina asks, standing up from the bed and searching for fresh clothes.

“So. Much.” Nico says, pointing each word out with a dramatic sigh, before crashing down on the bed in the spot she had just vacated- she frowns when she touches the wet spot on the bed but doesn’t say anything about it.

Karolina laughs. “What did he do this time?”

“All he talks about is this girl in his class, Liv or something,” Nico rants waving her hands in the air, “Like, I’m happy for him and all, but there's only so much time I can spend listening to my ex gushing over someone.”

Karolina makes a sceptical sound from the back of her throat while letting the towel drop and putting on her underwear and the first sundress she fishes out of her suitcase.

When Nico doesn’t speak again, she turns to face her, confused. Nico, who's looking quite red and ostensibly isn’t making eye contact with her.

She snaps her fingers in front of her face twice, and it takes a second before Nico's eyes snap to hers, wide and alarmed.

Weird.

“Not that I’m _not_ over him. It's just annoying,” Nico continues as if she had never stopped talking in the first place.

She lets it slide.

“I'm sure it is.”

“It's like when Chase starts going on and on about Gert, it's... irritating,” Nico ends the sentence by dropping to her back on the bed again.

She goes to sit next to her with a smile. “Give him a break. He's in love.”

_We do stupid things when we're in love,_ she wants to add, _like agreeing to be your best friend's fake girlfriend for kicks._

Nico props herself on her forearms, looking at her with a half disbelieving, half disgusted face. “God, how are we _friends?”_

“Shut up you love me.”

Nico rolls her eyes but doesn’t try to deny it.

“So,” Karolina drawls, poking Nico's shoulder, “No breakfast in bed?”

“Nope.”

“What kind of fake girlfriend are you?”

“The kind that takes you out for breakfast?” Nico ends it like a question, hands fidgeting with the bedsheets curling and uncurling, “Only if you want to, of course.”

“I'd like that,” Karolina's smile turns genuine and she gets a relieved one from Nico in return.

“Yeah? Okay, good.”

She frowns at the obvious twitchiness of Nico's movements, but she doesn’t have time to think much of it because Nico is already out of the door with her wallet in hand. She scrambles after her, picking her car keys and bolting after Nico.

Karolina skips ahead and opens the door for Nico, ignoring the eye roll she receives as thanks and popping into the driver's side.

“So, where to?” she asks, turning to Nico expectantly, “Starbucks? Krispy Kreme?”

“I was thinking more something like Timely?”

“You're feeling nostalgic today.”

Nico's answer is to giggle- she fucking _giggles-_ rubbing at her neck and avoiding all together looking at her.

_Why is she being so weird, today?_

She opens her mouth to ask, before thinking better of it and closing it. Nico will come to her when she's ready. She starts the car instead and heads to Timely.

When they park Nico jumps out of the car before Karolina has even the time to shut the engine, hurrying to Karolina's side of the car.

“Hey, hold up,” she says, struggling with her seatbelt, “What's the rush?”

Nico almost looks sheepish when she answers her. “I wanted to get the door for you.”

“Oh,” she hopes she's not blushing too heavily, “Thank you.”

Nico smiles- the lopsided one that makes it feel like her heart had grown two sizes and could barely fit in her chest anymore- and then takes her hand. “You're welcome.”

Nico only lets go of her hand when she pushes the door open for her- and Karolina feels utterly ridiculous for missing the contact the moment she loses it, but she does- queueing up behind the seemingly endless line to the counter. Who knew Timely was gaining this much of a following?

She's about to follow her, only to be stopped by a voice yelling her name.

“Karolina! Hey!”

She turns, surprised. “Julie! Hi, what's up?”

“Told you I'd catch you somewhere,” Julie winks.

“I thought that was more of a saying than a stalkery promise,” Nico snarks, popping behind Karolina as if out of thin air.

Julie purses her lips thinly. “I'd say less stalkery and more fortunate coincidences.”

“If you say so,” Nico drawls out slowly, teeth bared in one of her terrifying fake smiles that still give Karolina nightmares. To Julie's credit, she doesn’t react beyond a twitch of her smile around the corners.

Then Nico brushes a hand up Karolina's arm, softly and much more intimate than anything her heart can take. She blushes head to toe, and Nico smiles smug and satisfied. “I'll go order for us, Karrie. Take your time with Joan.”

“It's Julie.”

“Is it?” is the last thing Nico says, before sauntering off to the counter hips swaying. Karolina tries her best not to stare at her ass. By the wink Nico sends her way, she knows she hadn’t succeeded very well.

“I take _that's_ still a thing, uh?”

She turns back to Julie, cheeks still flushed bright red. “It's--”

“Complicated,” she finishes for her with a smile that looks more like a grimace, “Yes, so you've told me.”

“It is,” and Karolina doesn’t know what else to say behind that, wouldn’t even know where to start to explain her situation to an uninvolved party.

Thankfully, it seems she won't have to because Julie's smile turns from flirty to knowing. “Hopeless crushes on best friends usually are.”

Karolina smiles back, and it feels bittersweet. “Tell me about it. You speaking from experience?”

Julie just smiles enigmatically.

“If you ever want to talk to someone about it, or maybe get over it,” she hands her a small piece of paper with some number scrambled on, “You can give me a call.”

“I may just take you up on that,” Karolina takes it with a sad smile, “But I don’t think it's the kind of thing you get over, you know?”

“Well, you never know. You can give it a try if you want. It was nice meeting you again, Dean.”

“Take care.”

She joins Nico where she's standing waiting for their orders to be made and glaring at an already nervous barista. He hurries the drinks their way, gulping when Nico takes hers and turns away without even a thank you. She smiles apologetically at him, shoving some bills in the tip jar before taking off after Nico.

“Hey!” she grabs her shoulder, halting them both to a stop, “No car doors to open now, you can stop running.”

Nico doesn’t laugh at her joke- which, okay, it wasn’t very funny, but still, she would have liked a little pity laugh- barely reacts to her at all behind a twitch of her eyebrow. “What did she want?”

She frowns at Nico's blatant hostility. “Nothing. Just saying hi.”

“So that's not her number on that?” Nico says, nodding to Karolina's hand, which immediately flies behind her back in an attempt o to hide the piece of paper in it.

“That's what I thought.”

“It's not like that.”

“Sure. Just refrain to call her until the break is over, will you? We don’t want my mother walking in on your date.”

“I'm telling you, it's not like that!” she defends- and really in what world does anybody compare to Nico anyway?- she shakes her head, “She just wanted to talk about something.”

Nico keeps on looking suspicious. “Like what? She wants to cast you in her next big movie?”

At that Karolina huffs a laugh, because really, her in a movie was just something that's never going to happen- she had witnessed first hand and up close what Hollywood was like and she was not keen on repeating the experience.

“Nothing like that. Just stuff," she puts her free hand on Nico's shoulder, offering her a smile, "Can we go back to normal now?”

She feels Nico relax under her touch. “Yeah, sorry. I just-- I really don’t like her.”

She wrinkles her nose. “You barely had a conversation with her.”

“She rubs me off wrong.”

She doesn’t ask why.

(She thinks she knows the reason, anyway.)

Still, she feels the slight tinge of annoyance tingle her throat. She swallows it down.

Apart from that rocky start, their breakfast goes well. She even manages to convince Nico to split a muffin with her. All in all, not a bad start for a day she's been dreading since Molly told her about the party.

On the way back she's tempted to take the long route home, to stay like this a bit more before reality crashed on them. She wants to keep pretending for some more than this was a date- an honest to God date- that Nico had wanted to spend time with her just because and not to keep up some stupid, idiotic lie.

She slows down as she starts going down Chase's driveway until the car is barely moving.

“So, you ready for this big party?” Nico asks, interrupting her reverie.

Karolina's face pulls into a grimace. “Not really. I think I've reached my quota of parties for the month. But it's not like we can _skip_ it or anything, so.”

“We could, if you wanted,” Nico offers, hand covering her own on the stick, “We're already in a car. Nothing stops us from just fucking off somewhere until it's over.”

“You're sweet, but no can do,” Karolina says, parking her Mini behind Chase's Rolls, “Chase and I have to do that ritual where we disappear halfway through the night to get drunk together and then regret it in the morning.”

Nico smirks, mirth in her eyes. “I see. Very important stuff.”

“Exactly,” she nods seriously before they both erupt in a laugh.

“Come on, then. I want your opinion on something.”

Nico leads her up the stairs and into their assigned room with both excitement and nervousness, so Karolina really doesn’t know what to expect- maybe a new skirt? And when Nico shows her, she thinks she would have never been prepared for it either way.

She had just finished putting on her party outfit- black skinny jeans and a white t-shirt, today was not a day for trying too hard- and she's tying a hoodie around her hips when Nico calls her to attention.

And clearly, Nico hadn’t gotten the memo on the not trying too hard part.

_It's not a skirt_ , is her first thought.

Then her brain misfires, so she doesn’t actually have another and she's left staring at Nico speechless instead, her eyes wide and her heart trembling.

“Well,” Nico edges her on when she keeps on staying still and quiet, “What do you think?”

What _does_ she think.

She thinks she might be having a brain haemorrhage just from the sight of Nico in leather pants and a black, _tight_ corset. She thinks it's probably illegal the way said corset hugs her body. She thinks Nico may have just ruined Karolina for good.

She thinks she may never, ever recover.

“Wow.”

A smirk plasters on Nico's face. “So you like it?”

If Karolina's brain wasn't still so scrambled up from the sight that she could manage actual, not made-up words, she'd tell Nico how she didn’t just like it, or how beautiful she looked, or how Karolina wanted to kiss her until they'd forget completely about the party and the whole world fell apart around them.

Instead, she decides that the best course of action is to blush from head to toe. Nico's smirk only grows smugger. That makes it somehow worse, and there's surely something fucked up in Karolina if that's her reaction to Nico's display.

“Who are you trying to _kill?”_

Nico just offers her arm in lieu of an answer. “Shall we?”

Karolina shakes her head with exasperation but takes her arm nonetheless, letting Nico lead her into the heart of the party.

**

Karolina is bored.

She's bored and alone at a party, which shouldn’t be the standard for parties- she's pretty sure it's the exact opposite of the definition, actually- and yet here she is. Bored and alone at a party she didn’t even want to attend.

It had all began when Nico had left her side to go talk fashion to one of Molly's new college friends, and then Gert and Chase had gone to make out in a corner, and then Alex had disappeared with a bad excuse when a pretty girl had walked in- 'Liv-or-something' she supposes- and that's how Karolina ended up standing alone with nothing better to do than scroll through her phone.

Her fingers hover over Julie's contact- she had punched it in her phone while Nico wasn’t looking, because... just because- as she debates whether calling her was a mistake or not.

Probably a mistake.

Then again Julie had said to give her a call to talk, she shouldn’t feel guilty about _talking._

(She shouldn’t feel guilty at all, it's not like what she and Nico had was anything other than fiction.)

She shakes her head. Very, very bad mistake.

It's not like it would take her mind off Nico, anyway. Barely anything does, lately.

She closes her phone, leaning against the wall with a sigh. When she looks up, she finds Nico's eyes already on hers from across the room, warmth taking over her chest and stomach in a way only Nico could incite.

A new song starts playing in the background, and Karolina's brain quietly categorizes it as one of her favourites. She smiles and starts to make her way to her when Chase grabs her by her arm, balancing three bottles of wine precariously in his arms.

“Ready for our tradition?”

She laughs at his conspiratory tone. “Sure am, but I don’t think my liver is.”

“Eh, whatever. I'll buy you a new one. I hear the black market is doing a sale next week.”

Karolina laughs. “Okay, okay. Just one sec. I wanted to--”

But when she goes to look for Nico, she sees Victor had already made his way up to her.

There's another song playing loud in the speakers now, one Karolina doesn’t know but which seems like a perfect fit for Nico. She watches as Victor extends his arm, and as Nico takes it without a second glance her way.

(There's always another song.)

She doesn’t stay to watch him twirl her in his arms, she doesn’t think she could stand it.

“Never mind, let's go.”

Chase whoops and all but runs outside.

She sighs and follows Chase outside. They sit on the grass, passing one of the three bottles he had nicked back and fort. They stay silent, enjoying the time away from the noise of the party and each other's company.

The stars are dimmer tonight, and she doesn’t know if the reason why is that L.A. usual light pollution had gotten stronger, or if somehow the stars have detected her mood and decided to set the atmosphere to match. Karolina sighs, and Chase passes her the wine bottle wordlessly.

“Have you ever been in love?” she asks, cringing the moment the words leave her mouth. If there ever was a stupider question.

Chase lets out a big laugh that makes his sides shake and his eyes crinkle. “Well, I think that if I don’t answer 'I am' Gert may have my head.”

Karolina doesn’t say anything in response, just takes another swig out of the bottle and shakes her head with a laugh. Asking Chase Stein if he had ever been in love.

(Loving Nico is really taking a toll on her intelligence.)

“It's about Nico, isn’t it?” Chase guesses with a knowing smile that makes even Karolina want to punch him in the face.

“What?”

“The reason you're asking. I’m not just the guy with the car, you know? I know stuff.”

“Of course,” Karolina laughs, nudging his shoulder with a smirk, “Nobody said you were.”

“Well, I understand why you're worried about telling her since it's only been a month since you've started dating, but it's you and Nico so nobody is really surprised about this development," he scrolls his shoulders, "Anyway, I think you should just tell her.”

Karolina tips the bottle in her hand then tosses it behind her when it comes out empty. She takes another from their spoils of war, fiddling with the corkscrew. “Tell her what?”

“That you're in love with her,” Chase says like it's the simplest thing in existence. Maybe it is.

The cork comes free with a resounding pop and Karolina starts to splutter excuses trying to deny it, but Chase brushes them all away with a wave of his hand.

“I know what you're thinking. I thought the same things when Gert and I got together. I swear Karolina, I knew as soon as I kissed her for the first time. And then I didn’t say anything for like months because I thought it was too much, too soon,” he says, head high and eyes trained on the horizon and a smile on his lips as he continues.

“And then one day I just blurted it out, and she looked at me like it was the most obvious and dumb thing I could have ever said.”

The corners of her mouth twitch upwards. “That's how she always looks at you.”

“I know," Chase laughs, happy and free, "I love her.”

He says it with the dopiest of grins and the clearest of eyes, and Karolina envies him that.

She envies the clarity of his feelings, the openness of them, the lack of unrequitedness of them. Karolina doesn’t say anything back, but passes him the bottle, letting her head fall on his shoulder.

They stay like this for hours, tossing the bottle back and forth, talking and laughing.

(Karolina hasn’t felt this light since this whole fake dating scam has been in business.)

Until Chase throws her the bottle, standing up in a sudden and not at all coordinated movement. “I gotta go!”

“Where are you going?” Karolina asks the words slushing weirdly in her mouth.

“To talk to Gert.”

“What about the other bottle?”

Chase is already halfway to the house when he shouts his answer. “You can have it! Wish me luck!”

“Good luck!” she shouts back, falling into the grass with a thump and a giggle.

Her hand reaches out to the stars without her telling it to. She lets it fall down to her side again, fingers curling into the ground and head shaking at her own antics.

The earth beneath her feet, Atlas, and the crushing weight of the sky.

Most days, she can't feel anything but the weight of it all on her shoulders. She has borne the burden of her mother's expectations and it doesn’t come close to the one she bears because of the notion of her unrequited feelings.

And in those days, she wonders if it wouldn’t all be easier to just be a star, stuck in the firmament watching down on the earth. It must seem all so little, so insignificant, to the stars above her.

After all, what are expectations to a star?

What is heartbreak to a star?

What is _Karolina_ to a star?

Just another girl, just another human, just another soul pierced by a ray of sunlight and left to die here.

Then again, if Karolina is insignificant, so is her mom, so is her father... so is Nico.

But Nico is the opposite of insignificant, she's bold and brave and so, so important. Nico _matters._ Maybe so does she. She takes another swing of wine, and then another, and then another until there's nothing left in the bottle and the alcohol has melted her bones and her thoughts into a puddle.

God, she should have stopped Chase, or at least made him chose something better than red wine, tequila or something.

Wine drunk was always the worst kind of mopey drunk.

She takes a deep breath and starts listing three things she can feel- like her therapist told her to do when she feels overwhelmed.

There's the soft breeze cooling her skin down, there's the prick of grass against her bare legs, there's the tingle in her lips from the wine. She presses her fingers to them, giggling at the sensation of it.

She sighs and closes her eyes, and lets herself just be.

Nico finds her like this, eyes closed and laying in the dew-wet grass.

It's a short while after the music pumping from the house had quieted down, and a long while since Chase had left her there to go chase after Gert's love.

“Karolina? Are you here?”

Even when she's drunk out of her mind Karolina's body reacts to Nico's voice. She stands up all at once, her head rushing with the sudden movement, grin already in place widening the moment she spots her.

“Nico! Hey! Chase left me this bottle as a gift, isn’t he nice?”

Nico smiles thinly, looking right on the brim of a laugh and Karolina pouts.

“Yes, very nice,” she acquiesces, and Karolina smiles brightly again, “Did he leave you out here by yourself?”

“Yeah! He said he had to say something to Gert,” Karolina lets herself fall down, sitting in the wet grass with a loud plop, she sighs happily, “I hope he sings to her, wouldn’t that be romantic?”

Nico looks wary of her then, her eyes squinting and piercing Karolina in place. “If you start singing brown-eyed girl to me like last time, I'm leaving you here alone.”

Karolina squints her eyes assessing Nico's seriousness. “You wouldn’t.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” Nico agrees, sitting down near Karolina in the same fashion albeit much more gracefully, “Someone needs to be here to save you from yourself.”

“I don’t need babysitting, Nico, I am not a baby. I am a grown lesbian.”

At that Nico outright laughs. The nerve of her. “You sure are, babe.”

She likes it when Nico laughs, though, so she says nothing of it. Then her mind jumps to the conversation she had with Chase. “Have you ever been in love?”

Nico chokes on her laughter.

“Oh my god. You okay?”

Nico shakes her head no, then nods. “Yeah, yes. I’m fine.”

“What's the matter?”

“Nothing, nothing. Everything's fine.”

Karolina tilts her head, looking curiously into Nico's truly beautiful brown eyes- she would sing the song, but Nico would really be upset at her then and she doesn’t like it when Nico is upset at her.

“Is it because I said love?” she whispers.

“No!” Nico says, but her face lights up in the prettiest of pinks. Karolina brushes it away, tugging at her arm.

“So, have you?”

“I-- have you?”

She squints her eyes at Nico playfully. “I asked you first. But yes, only once.”

“Oh. Was it Xavin?” Nico tries to say neutrally, but her face can't hide the sour expression. It's cute. Karolina wants to poke her face. Her finger is halfway up to her face when she realizes something hilarious to her inebriated mind.

“It's funny. You never liked Xavin, you don’t like Julie, you don’t like any girl who's ever been interested in me,” she slurs the world slightly, the world shifting and turning with them and she lets out a giggle.

Nico looks at loss for words, her mouth opening and closing without making any sound. “I-- so you admit she's been flirting?”

“I never said she wasn't, just that _I_ wasn’t.”

“Julie shouldn’t flirt with you regardless, you're my girlfriend.”

“Fake girlfriend,” Karolina points out with another giggle- at least, when she's drunk their predicament feels more funny than painful- and Nico pales.

“She should know better anyway,” she grumbles in the end.

_And God, isn’t that a bit hypocritical of you, Nico?_

“What about Victor, then?” Karolina asks, leaning in Nico's personal space with a frown. Nico blushes out of the blue- first her cheeks, then her ears and her neck- and that's enough of an answer for Karolina.

“What about him?” Nico finally challenges anyway after the blush has receded, without even trying to deny it.

Karolina pushes anyway. “Shouldn't he know better, too?”

“What are you talking about?” Nico asks as her face scrunches in an adorably confused frown.

“Well, should they know better regardless?” she continues- and Karolina should _really_ stop talking before she says something she doesn’t mean, or worse that she does mean but would never say out loud sober- she leans back gesturing between her and Nico with a jerk of her hand, “It's not like any of this is real. I mean, it's all fake. Us. Fake.”

“That's... true.”

She tilts her head, confused by Nico's hesitation. _“Is_ everything alright?”

“Yeah. We should go inside, though,” Nico says, playing the voice of reason.

“But I don’t wanna,” she whines, drawling the last syllable while letting her head fall on Nico's shoulder with a soft thud.

Nico shakes her off with a laugh, slapping her hands on her thighs with finality. “C' mon don’t be a baby, it's cold.”

“Why didn’t you say so? Are you cold? Do you want my hoodie?” she asks frantically, shooting to her feet in a second, almost knocking Nico over in the process and trying to get her sweatshirt over her head.

How could she be so inconsiderate? Nico must be freezing! She's only wearing a corset, after all.

Oh no.

Nico is only wearing a corset.

Karolina's brain fumbles with the notion for a bit, and Nico takes the opportunity to shove the hoodie back down on Karolina's body.

“Why don’t we just go inside? So neither of us are cold.”

A dopey smile pops on her face when she feels Nico entwine their fingers together. “You're smart, Nico. So, so smart.”

“C' mon, doofus,” she takes the empty bottle from where it's laying in the grass- Karolina wonders where the other two had gone, hopes she hadn’t tossed them somewhere in a drunken haze, that would be a bad vegan thing to do. “You're going to regret this in the morning.”

“No, I won't.”

“Whatever you say, Dean.”

Nico is even prettier up close, Karolina notices.

_Pretty like a picture._

Her mother had said that sentence to her once when she was fourteen and still listened to what her mother said, when she had still some kind words left for her. But the sentence hadn’t sparked anything in her brain until now.

Pretty like a picture.

“I want to paint you.”

Nico keeps dragging her towards the house, struggling to keep both of them upright. “That's nice, Karolina.”

She stops them to a halt, grabbing Nico's shoulder. “I'm serious. You're so pretty. I want to paint you.”

“You did already babe, remember?”

“I didn’t do you justice, though.”

Nico's lips pull into that fond smile reserved only for Karolina, and she knows she has won.

“Okay. How about this? You can paint me tomorrow if you remember this conversation,” Nico says, and then tugs at her hand to make her move again.

“Okay,” she agrees silenced by the promise, “I will.”

They're almost to their designated room in Chase's guest house- his _guest house_ , how fucking rich are their parents?- Nico making a valiant effort to keep the two of them upright the whole time and shushing her any time she tried to talk too loudly or burst out into giggles.

In the end, Karolina ends up having to walk bent over, Nico's hand in place over her mouth.

Karolina doesn’t care about that, though.

She's too busy staring at Nico's face to care much about anything else. She tugs at the hand covering her mouth until Nico frees her mouth, but doesn’t let go of her waist.

“What?”

Karolina turns her fully towards her, her hands flying to Nico's face. She stares through her lashes into Nico's pretty, pretty brown eyes. “I want to kiss you.”

Nico drops her hold on her like she was scorched, making Karolina slush in place before straightening herself. She looks into Nico's big doe eyes, closes her own and goes for the kiss.

Instead of being met by soft lips, though, she's pushed back harshly.

“Karolina!” Nico's sharp whisper makes her eyes fly open.

“What?” she asks, trying to not let the hurt of being rejected seep into her voice.

"You're drunk!" Nico's hand are shaking, her face is flushed and her jaw tightly clenched, “You're drunk. Just-- just stop, okay?”

_Oh, no._ She upset Nico. Her eyes fill with tears at the thought. “Are you mad?”

Nico's hand pinches the bridge of her nose, shaking her head. She takes a big breath before answering her. “No, I’m not mad.”

“Yes, you are.”

“I'm not, Karolina.”

Nico manages to smile, a flimsy little thing but it's enough so that Karolina's drunken mind is pacified.

When they get into bed, she doesn’t let Nico even for a second think of getting away from cuddling, squishing her against her front. Karolina sighs blissfully, nose nuzzling into Nico's neck.

“I don’t understand how you can think anyone could mean anything to me when you're right here.”

She doesn’t wait to hear Nico's response and slips into a dreamless sleep.

**

When Karolina wakes up, she's alone in bed and her head is pounding.

This is the last time she lets Chase talk her into drinking red wine for fun. Who is she kidding, this will be her state again at the next party he throws. She tries to open her eyes only to be blinded by a ray of sunshine.

She's been shot.

This is it.

It had been fun until it had lasted. She's going to die alone on Chase's guest room's bed, hungover and blinded by too much sunlight. And she had never even gotten to graduate.

“Oh, you're already awake.”

Karolina manages a grunt in response, forcing her body to sit up.

“Here, drink this.”

A hot cup is trusted in her hands, and then with a flap, the room is shrouded in blackness.

“Thank you,” she says, finally opening her eyes and looking up at Nico. But when she does, Nico turns away from her quickly, just not quickly enough that Karolina doesn’t see the frown on her face.

That's when the events of the previous night come back to her in a rush of botched memories and deep regrets.

“What happened?” she groans.

“You got drunk,” Nico shrugs it off, still not quite looking at her.

“Yeah, I can feel that. Why did you let me is the question.”

“You ran off with Chase in the middle of the party, it's not like I could have _actually_ stopped you.”

“God, you should have. My head is pounding.”

“Do you remember anything?”

“No, nothing,” she lies, scratching her nose trying to hide her expression as more and more details begin to fill her mind- she had tried to kiss Nico, she had tried to kiss Nico, she had tried to kiss Nico, what is _wrong_ with her- she shakes her head.

“Everything is a bit fuzzy, to be honest. Wine drunk,” she shrugs one shoulder and Nico nods as if she understands perfectly.

Nico's shoulders fall down, she sits on the bed and strokes her arm. “It wasn’t anything important, don’t worry.”

_Wasn't it?_ she wants to scream, _I tried to kiss you and you pushed me away._

She says nothing instead, just closes her eyes and lets Nico's slow strokes lull her into a dreamless sleep.

The second time she wakes up, the sun is low in the sky and Nico is no longer in their room. Karolina turns her head, burying it in a pillow that smells an awful lot like Nico.

_Nico._

What was she thinking, trying to kiss her like that? While drunk? She groans, the sound muffled by the pillow.

She is about two minutes away from a proper meltdown when Gert comes in.

“Good, you're awake. Fix it.”

“Fix what?” she grumbles, not bothering with looking up at Gert probably motherly disappointed face.

“Nico. I don’t know what stupidly devastating thing you said to your girlfriend yesterday, but please fix it by dinner, because she already made Chase cry twice and I can't take it anymore.”

That catches her attention. She rolls over to face her. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Sure.”

“I didn’t!”

“Karolina, you don’t have to keep everything to yourself, I'm here. It's natural that you and Nico would have a disagreement once in a while, even if you're two freaks who never fight about anything ever,” Gert tries again, dropping the mothering quality of her tone and settling for the sympathetic one she knows will get Karolina talking.

And God, she's good- too good.

Karolina sits up slowly, considering her options. She could lie. And it's not like she hasn’t been doing her fair share of lying lately.

Only, Karolina needs to talk to someone about this, and Gert is offering, after all.

“If I told you,” she starts slowly, “And I’m not saying I will, would you keep quiet about it?”

“I feel like I should be offended by this.”

“You meddle, Gert, and you let a lot 'slip' accidentally,” she points out, air quoting the slipping part.

Gert lifts her arms in surrender. “Okay, okay, I promise. Girl Scouts' honour. Cross my heart and hope to die, and all that.”

“You weren’t a girl scout,” she says, squinting her eyes suspiciously.

“I still have honour.”

And yeah, Karolina can't argue against that.

So Karolina explains the problematic situation she's found herself in. Gert stays quiet for about ten minutes after she's done talking- which is strange and the longest she had seen Gert stay silent for since that one time she gave Chase the silence treatment for a week.

When she finally speaks, her face is indecipherable. “Let me get this straight.”

“A first for you, but go ahead.”

“Don't sass me,” Gert says fixing her with a glare that makes Karolina's jaw drop close, “You're telling me you two were faking it all this time?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t realize you loved Nico until after you started this whole mess, right?”

Karolina sighs and tells the truth. “Well, kinda? Like I always knew I felt something for her, but I didn’t realize I was actually, properly in love with her until... well, now I guess.”

“And you _agreed_ to this still knowing that?”

Karolina pouts. “When you say it like that, it sounds pretty dumb.”

“Maybe because it's completely idiotic? How blonde are you?” Gert shouts, flaying her arms around like a madwoman.

Karolina winches at the volume. “Don't abuse me, I’m hungover.”

“What do you want me to say? Mazel tov, you're faking a relationship with your long term crush and love of your life?”

Karolina groans, throwing herself back into the bed and praying for the earth to open and swallow her whole.

Gert slaps her face with a pillow. “Don't be like that. You don’t get to. You brought this on yourself.”

“I knew I shouldn’t have said anything to you.”

Another slap, this time to her stomach. “Rude.”

“Gert, I’m so fucked.”

Gert sighs and sits by her, stroking her arm. “Why don’t you two just talk? She's Nico, you've like been meant to be together since fourth grade.”

“She pushed me away!”

“Yeah, and you were _drunk!”_

“She still doesn’t feel the same way. She doesn’t want me,” she says and she knows she makes for a pitiful sight- still in her dress with day-old, smudged makeup on- but she doesn’t care. Nico doesn’t want her. Nothing else matters.

“Now, that is idiotic.”

“Gert.”

“It's you and Nico! I bet you that in like three years I will tell this story as my best woman's speech.”

“You won't be my best woman.”

“Who said anything about being yours?”

“Whatever,” Karolina rolls on the bed, burying her head into Nico's pillow, “Just leave me here. I'm trying to drown in my misery.”

“Nope, you smell. Get into the shower and then come down and deal with this like an adult.”

“No.”

“Karolina.”

When Karolina doesn’t answer nor move, Gert pulls the blanket from underneath her sending her flying straight to the floor. She squeaks indignantly but Gert just stares her down. She sighs and resigns herself to the notion that Gert has won this round.

“Just please, don’t be weird about this.”

Gert kicks her still unmoving body halfheartedly. “I'm never weird.”

“You are, your eyes do that evil glint thing.”

“My eyes don’t glint, Karolina. They sparkle.”

“Please.”

Gert sighs dramatically one last time, but nods.

“But I swear if you two don’t talk about it, I'm going to lock you into a closet until you do. And I'll enjoy the irony of it!” she shouts, letting the door slam behind her.

Karolina groans from the floor, dropping her forearm and covering half of her face with it. Maybe telling Gert hadn’t been that good of an idea. She sighs as she steps into the bathroom. Too late to take it back now.

After her shower, she does come down, but she doesn’t exactly deal with it.

Quite the opposite, actually.

She puts on her shoes, sneaks into the kitchen for a water bottle and some crackers, and runs away from her problems like every self-adjusted adult does when they try to kiss their best friend while drunk and in a fake relationship- she's _sure_ it's a common situation.

She lets the drop of her feet on the asphalt and the music in her ear-buds drown every thought of Nico.

It doesn’t work.

She picks up the pace with every unwanted thought of Nico. The way her lips felt against hers, the way they fit together perfectly, the way she would smile at her after a kiss.

The way she had flinched away from her the other night.

Even in that last second before the push, some part of her was convinced that Nico felt something real for her too. She was sure she would have been met halfway.

(She was _wrong.)_

She wishes that what she told Nico about not remembering was true, instead, she was stuck reliving every moment of the rejection. She should have known. She shouldn’t have done anything about her feelings. She should have just locked them down where they were hidden before, not dealing with them like she had been doing for the last five years.

She stops running and bends over, gasping for breath.

What was she meant to do now?

She'd have to get over her, of course.

She will not let her feelings get in the way of their friendship. Nico matters too much to her to lose over something as hopeless as her feelings. She will have to talk to her therapist, who would probably tell her running from her problems isn’t healthy.

(She'd be annoyingly right.)

She takes a deep breath and heads back to Chase's.

For now and for as long as this gig was still up, she'll have to just stop thinking about Nico.

Easy.

**

She's in the middle of _not thinking about Nico_ when she bumps right into her, sending her down to the floor in a flurry of paper towels.

(She had said _easy,_ right?)

“Oh God, are you okay?”

Nico stays still on the floor, eyes staring up at the ceiling. “So this is what being run over feels like...”

She offers her a hand with a laugh. “Not sure, you'd have to ask Molly that.”

“Molly was run over?” Nico asks as Karolina pulls her to her feet.

“Yeah, once. She dented the car and got out of it without a scratch, though.”

“Damn,” Nico whistles low and long, “That girl is made of steel.”

“I know,” and not knowing what else to say to keep the conversation going, she awkwardly laughs.

“So,” Nico drawls the syllable on and then pops it by smacking her lips, “Where were you?”

“Oh, I went running.”

Nico tilts her head, squinting her eyes adorably. “Hungover?”

“It helps,” she defends, looking away from Nico's too suspicious face.

Nico looks uncertain, but she shrugs. “You're not human, Dean.”

There's that awkward silence again.

Karolina is not used to this. She has never been uncomfortable with Nico, even in their silences. She's always been the only person Karolina could be completely herself with, and she had managed to taint this too with her feelings.

She clears her throat. “So, what's up?”

Nico looks at her like she's crazy. “Helping to set the table,” she says, gesturing to the mess of towels on the ground.

Karolina cringes. “Right. Can I help?”

“Knock yourself out.”

She picks some of the towels from the ground with a laugh. “Lucky you weren’t carrying plates when I ran into you.”

“Have you seen Chase's plates? We'd be doing him a favour.”

“Don't be mean.”

“But it's my only natural-born talent,” Nico says, bumping her hip against hers and going around her to reach the table.

Karolina rolls her eyes.

In a few minutes, they're done, working like a well-oiled machine. Karolina counts the spots on the table. Two, four, six.

Perfect.

Nico stops by her side too, counting silently her finger pointing to each spot. “We need one more plate.”

“Why?” she frowns.

“Victor stayed the night, too.”

Karolina hums in answer, knowing she's doing a poor job of hiding the displeasure on her face. Nico doesn’t comment on it, luckily, but just moves to the pantry in the kitchen. Karolina follows her.

She finds Nico balancing on a chair, trying to grab the last plate from the cabinet. She's one minute away from the hospital, and Karolina really isn’t in the mood to clean her best friend blood from the pavement.

“Do you need help with that?”

“I'm short,” Nico grumbles, “But not that short.”

“Right,” she replies dryly, “Why don’t we get off the chair?”

“Bite me.”

And with that final rebut Nico loses her balance, tipping the chair back and fort, and falling backwards into Karolina's readied arms.

“Told you.”

And what a fantastic lapse in judgement on Karolina's part, because it brings them much closer together than they have been in the last twenty-four hours or at least since Karolina's drunken pass on Nico.

She recoils back.

Nico turns with a frown, and Karolina laughs awkwardly. “I got a shock. Weird, right?”

“Right.”

“I'll go call the others.”

**

After dinner, she waits as long as possible before making her way to their room. She finds Nico already there sitting on their bed, Karolina's sketchbook closed in her lap and fingers gripping it with white knuckles.

_Oh shit._

“What are the chances you didn’t open that?”

Nico doesn’t lift her eyes, keeps staring at the sketchbook in her hands like if she stopped for a second, it'd cease to exist. “You drew me. Like a lot.”

“So that's a 100%, good to know.”

Nico finally looks at her, but Karolina can't understand what she's thinking, anyway. “Why?”

“Well, didn’t you say I could draw you if I asked?” she tries to brush Nico's gaze off with a joke. Only it doesn’t work. Like, at all.

Nico narrows her eyes. “You remember that?”

And Karolina knows she has made a mistake the moment it had come out of her lips. “Yeah?”

“You told me you didn’t remember anything that happened last night.”

Karolina's smile falls off her lips. “I--”

“So which one is it?”

“Nico...”

“Have you been lying to me?”

“Of course not!”

“Then tell me the truth!”

_Which one_ , she wants to say, _there are too many cramped up in this whole mess._

(It's true what they say, it's always easy until it isn’t.)

“I don’t... I don’t think I know what you're talking about,” she ends up saying, eyes flying everywhere looking for an escape route. The window looks more and more appealing, she has to say. Nico takes a step towards her.

“I think you do.”

She takes one back. “I told you this was a bad idea.”

“Karolina, please. Tell me the truth.”

“Can you really not tell, Nico?” she asks instead and doesn’t wait for her answer, she just turns on her heel and flees out of their room.

The truth.

The truth: Karolina knew this would have ended in a conversation she had been avoiding having with herself, let alone with Nico.

The truth: she knows why Nico has never liked anyone she'd ever dated, and it's the same reason why Karolina's smile got a bit tighter when she was around Alex for too long, the same reason why Victor made her skin crawl when he smiled at Nico.

The truth: there was always something there, but it was easier to ignore it, so she did.

(The truth is: she doesn’t know how to fix this.)

She almost makes it to the door when Nico stops her, grabbing her by her wrist in an iron grip. “You're not avoiding this conversation a second time, Karolina!”

“Watch me!” she snarls, shrugging her hand off and trying hard not to be affected by the hurt look in Nico's eyes.

“Why won't you talk to me about this?” she pleads, taking a few steps towards her and approaching her like you would a hurt animal.

Karolina backs down until her back hits the wall and there's nowhere else to escape. “Why do you want to?”

“I just want the truth,” Nico says eyes locked to hers, stealing whatever was left of Karolina's heart that hadn’t already been freely given by her.

“The truth? I don’t know Nico, with you I can't-- I never could-- Nico, please. You're so important to me, but we keep blurring lines, crossing lines, and I just don’t know anymore.”

“Just talk to me! Please.”

She laughs, vicious and biting and downright cruel, and Nico reels back at the sound. “Or what? You'll kiss me?”

She had meant to say it like a joke, set of her shoulders light and open and brushing off any seriousness. It was supposed to come out as a joke- a cruel joke maybe, but a joke nonetheless. But she hadn’t expected to hear the truth screaming so visibly from it.

She doesn’t know who looks more surprised by her words if Nico or she herself.

Then Nico does something that steals all the air from her lungs and all the blood from her veins and surprises her even more.

She kisses her.

And Karolina lets her.

(She would always let her.)

Nico yanks her down and pulls her face to hers, lips warm and tongue warmer, licking into her mouth like it was what she’d been planning to do all night.

This kiss feels different from all the others they've shared because even when Karolina couldn’t manage to restrain herself properly, it never got so desperate, so unmerciful in its wanting. And yet, it feels right.

It feels just like them- inevitable, irresistible, undeniable.

And Karolina has never been good at being selfish, never been too good at the wanting part of her relationships.

Xavin at times faulted her that, she remembers. The fact she never told them what she wanted clearly, the fact the one time she had it broke them. And then Karolina had stopped wanting because it was easier.

She had never been good at being selfish because it was easier to pretend to want for nothing than confronting what she truly desired.

But Nico... God, Nico makes Karolina _want._

So Karolina takes Nico's bottom lip in-between her lips, sucking hard on it and kissing Nico back giving as good as she got, answering a prayer that had no words.

(And, like, whatever. It was on par with Karolina's decision-making skills of the day. She liked to be consistent.)

She buries one of her hands in her black hair, the other wrapping around her waist and pushing her into her body. She pulls at Nico's hair- still mindful of not hurting her- but just enough so she lets out a low moan Karolina swallows with her mouth and that sends a spike of heat to her stomach.

She wants more.

She wants everything.

She wants Nico.

Karolina's pulled apart at the seams, skin splitting into halves until her every nerve is exposed. It feels like being boiled alive, heat increasing and increasing in her blood, tide never receding until it all comes down in a rush.

When they break the kiss, they're both breathless.

Karolina pulls away a fraction as she looks into Nico's blown pupils, looking for the feeling she so desperately wants Nico to feel for her. “Why did you do that?”

“Karolina...”

She sees the sheer doubt and uncertainty crossing over her face and she already knows the ending to whatever excuse Nico will say. Karolina's heart flutters once, twice in her chest before going still.

She's such an idiot.

She's been here before, with a pretty girl who didn’t _really_ like her but who had kissed her all the same. Backtracking in the morning with an _'I was drunk'_ or a _'you didn’t really like me, right?'_ and Karolina falling for it over and over again.

She should have known.

She's such an idiot.

She looks at her feet, anger seeping into her voice buried in grief. “Why do you always _do_ this?”

Nico looks just as dejected. “Karolina, just hea--”

“I can't. I have to-- I have to go.”

She turns on her heel, and hell tails it out of the house and into the football field Chase calls his backyard.

She waits until the house is completely out of sight before crashing to the floor, tears streaming down her face quietly, burning a path down her cheeks. She pulls her legs to her chest, burying her head on her knees with a whimper.

If for nothing else, Karolina thinks bitterly, at least now she understands the meaning of the idiom 'a broken heart'- or, at least, the two truths behind it.

The lucky truth of broken hearts is that they can truly break only once, everything else is just a scratch. The unfortunate truth of broken hearts is that you don’t know whether yours is broken or not until it's in sharp pieces cutting into your hand.

Karolina's hands are bleeding red.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello, turns out i lied and there are now four chapters to this train wreck. shit. the only reason i hadnt updated this sooner was because i'm fucking stubborn and didnt want to add another chapter to the chapter count AGAIN, but it was getting ridiculously long so i swallowed my pride.
> 
> feels a bit mean to leave this in angst zone, especially since im still drowing in exams and not sure when i'll have time to end this but it's almost all finished if it makes y'all feel better.
> 
> keep me in your prayers, and thanks again for the kudos and comments.
> 
> cheers!


	4. Act IV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the hybris of thinking i could have a wip while on exam's month

Something your parents never tell you: love doesn’t go away with anger.

And she is.

Angry.

She's furious. With herself for harbouring less than friendly feelings for her best friend, with Gert for intruding again, with Nico for kissing her and not meaning it, with herself some more for kissing her back.

And what's worse is that she wants to fix it anyway. She had just gone and broken her heart in a million pieces, and she _still_ wanted to fix things with Nico.

God, she's fucked up.

She keeps on dissecting their last kiss over and over with surgical precision, the way Nico's lips had opened against hers, the way her eyelids had fluttered shut, the way her fingers had dig in the dip of her hips so fiercely Karolina feels as if Nico's fingerprints are now forever tattooed to her body.

She shakes herself. It's not a memory she can let herself get lost into.

Maybe it's a blessing they're still at Chase's house instead than at Nico's. Nobody will question why she's sleeping on the couch downstairs instead of in their bed. With Nico.

Nico.

(Nico, Nico, Nico.)

She wonders if repeating her name over and over and over like a mantra will somehow desensitise her against it, in the same way ingesting a drop of poison every day makes you impervious to it in the long run.

Probably not, but she'll try anyway.

(Nico, Nico, Nico.)

It doesn’t work. It only brings more thoughts of her with each repetition, and it's the opposite of what she needs at the moment.

What she needs right now is to stop thinking about Nico and- in Karolina's honest opinion- anger is a good enough distraction for the night.

So she spends the night angry, coming up with incensed, clever comebacks to say, running through every possible argument she may have with Nico, with Gert. And maybe it's not the sanest reaction to a rejection, but it's all Karolina _has._

The next morning she wakes with a crick in her neck that won't go away and a hole in her chest where her heart had been, filled with the sort of regret that usually accompanied the bad decisions made the night before when exposed to the new morning's light.

The warmth anger had filled her with had left overnight, leaving behind only cold acceptance.

She stares up at the ceiling, wallowing in hopelessness and regrets when a voice interrupts her pity party rudely. “Now, this is pathetic.”

“What do you want, Chase?”

“To understand why you're down here on a couch when there's a perfectly good bed of up there with Nico,” he leans on the backrest of the couch, peering down at her like she was a blueprint he couldn’t quite figure out, “And to help you out too, I guess.”

She sighs and closes her eyes. “It's complicated.”

“How can it be?” Chase asks, grinning down at her without a care, “It's you and Nico.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” she says, shaking her head.

“He would, actually,” Gert chimes in, popping up beside her boyfriend, “He knows.”

“You told _him?”_ she yells shooting up immediately, glaring daggers into her skull.

Gert, for her part, just looks at her annoyingly unshaken. “He's my boyfriend. Of course I told him.”

“Gert!”

“What?”

“It's _Chase!”_

Said Chase straightens up with a frown. “Should I be offended by that?”

“I don’t know, should you?” Karolina rolls her eyes- and she _knows_ she's being nasty but she doesn’t have the strength to deal with his theatrics at the moment.

“Rude.”

“And I don’t need your help anyway,” she continues, crossing her arms over her chest stubbornly, “Look where it got me the first time I listened to you.”

“You didn’t listen to me at all, that's why you're in such a mess. If you maybe stopped being such a child--”

Karolina harrumphs in answer- because she's an _adult,_ thank you very much.

“Then I guess you don’t want to know what I was talking about with Nico just now?” Gert calls her bluff easily. Karolina rolls her eyes again and falls back down on the couch with a resounding thud.

“Whatever,” she says, trying to aim for carelessness when she tags on, “What did she tell you?”

“She said...” Gert drags, giving her a sly smirk and knowing how much it angered her the longer he stalled.

Chase is no better, purposefully taking a pregnant pause, and Karolina tries not to twitch in her seat, to pretend it doesn’t matter what Nico said, that she doesn’t want to know what Nico had said about the kiss.

“Do you know why I dyed my hair purple?” Gert continues out of the blue and Karolina sighs, exasperated with her antics.

“I don’t know. Teenage rebellion?” she guesses with a shrug.

“Yeah, that too. Nico had knitted me a purple scarf and I told her I would dye my hair that colour.”

“Okay. So what?”

“That's what we talked about.”

“Pick a god and pray.”

Chase laughs at her threat, booping her nose. “Edgy much?”

She snaps her teeth and Chase withdraws his hand quickly, before bolting away. Smart move on his part, probably.

“Don't traumatize my boyfriend,” Gert chastises her with a pat on her head.

“Don't go spill my secrets to him,” she glares up at her, “So much for staying quiet about it, uh?”

“I know, I’m sorry.”

“Are you?”

Gert makes a face, a cross between 'I don’t give a fuck' and 'what are you going to do about it?'.

“Nope, but you wanted to hear it. And I needed to talk to somebody about the best course of action to take.”

“This is the opposite of not meddling, you know right?” Gert grins and Karolina can't do anything but sigh- because, really, what does she have to lose? And it's not like Gert would stop the plan in motion if she asked her nicely- “And what did you end up on deciding?”

Gert claps her hands together with a grin. “Follow me.”

She leads her to a door she had never noticed before, underneath the staircase and hidden from view, Nico standing near it wearing a frown on her face.

“Hey Gert, I don’t think I’m finding that screw Chase wanted in here... what's going on?”

Gert pushes her into Nico and right inside the closet. “Just remember I warned you about this!”

“About what?” she asks, turning back towards to Gert just in time to watch the door slam to a close in front of her, trapping her in a closet with the last person she wants to be alone with at the moment.

“Gert!” Nico shouts, eyes wide with panic.

“You can come out of here when you solve this situation.”

Karolina bangs her fist on the door. “Gert, I swear to God!”

“Talking is the fundament to a good and healthy relationship!”

“Gert!” she shouts, banging her fist on the door again. When there's no answer to her yell, she bangs her fist on the door another time, for good measure.

Nico just looks resigned.

And beautiful.

She always looks beautiful, though. Nico is beautiful and Karolina desperately wishes she could think anything else, but right now the thought feels so all-consuming it's the only thing she has head-space for.

It's a cosmic truth.

(The sky is blue, the grass is green, and Nico has exceptional bone structure.)

At the moment though, her exceptional bone structure is contorted in a frown. “I should have known Gert would have tried something like this.”

Karolina just slides down the door quietly, resting her head against it with a sigh. “Why?”

“Once, when we were like five, she hid all of my My Little Pony's in the woods because she said they didn’t belong in captivity. Feels fitting she would close us in a closet to make us make up.”

Karolina hums in answer, not knowing exactly what to say back. Uncomfortable silence it is. She stares at the flickering light mocking her from the ceiling. She manages three minutes before it becomes unbearable.

“Well, she literally told me she would lock us in a closet if we didn’t talk, so,” she shrugs her shoulder, “Maybe I should have expected this.”

Nico stares her down with a blank face. “And you didn’t think it was strange when she lured you in a closet?”

“I-- I'm not. You-- I don’t know!”

“You don’t know,” Nico repeats in a monotone, mocking.

Karolina shoots to her feet, anger flaring red hot in her veins. “What? You’re the only one who's allowed to do things just because?”

“What are you talking about?”

Karolina huffs, crossing her arms over her chest. “What _am_ I talking about.”

“I don’t even know what we've been fighting about, Karolina! I'd like some clarity on the subject, at least, before you cut my head off.”

“We're fighting because you couldn’t leave it well enough alone! God, I told you this, whatever this is,” she gestures to the two of them angrily, “Was a bad idea.”

Nico takes a step back, turning her eyes away from Karolina's gaze. “Is that how you really feel?”

“Why? You suddenly care about how I feel?”

“How can you say that? Of course I do. Karolina, you're my best friend.”

(She's sure there was a time when those words didn’t feel like a bullet tearing through her flesh.)

“Yeah?” she snaps instead of applying some critical thinking to the situation, “It doesn’t feel like it lately.”

“Okay, what has gotten into you?”

“Nothing.”

“Is this about Julie?”

She's actually taken aback by the assumption, face scrunching up in confusion. “About Julie?”

“It has to be about her, right?” Nico insists, almost pleading and with a manic look in her eyes.

And wouldn’t it be much easier, if it was? If it was really about Julie, and not about her incapacity of letting go of Nico or of what she feels for her.

“Karolina.”

 _What if it isn’t?_ she thinks of saying- she thinks of being brave- _what if it's about you? What if it was always about you?_

But Karolina is a coward with a broken heart, so she says neither of those things and instead looks away.

“Karolina,” Nico says again, and she _hates_ how her name sounds on her lips- all careful and hesitant, like a person trying to calm down a hurt wild animal- she hates it almost as much as she loves it, she hates how she already knows she's going to cave in.

“What?” she whispers on bathed breath, hope creeping still in her voice like water.

“I'm sorry.”

And if Nico had stopped there, Karolina would have accepted the apology and they could have carried on without a care. But she had to continue.

“I’m sorry I told you not to call her. It's just that--”

Nevermind. Change of plans. Not caving in anymore. “Just what? I can't talk to girls anymore?”

“Yes!” Nico screams, and then shakes her head, “No! I didn't-”

Anger, white-hot and blinding, makes its space in Karolina's head, overshadowing whatever common sense she knows she possesses.

“You want to know how I feel. Fine! Wanna know why I haven’t dated anyone seriously in like years? Ever wondered about what Xavin and I were always arguing about? Why I let everyone get away?”

“Karo...”

She takes a step forward and Nico takes one back, hitting the wall behind her.

“You're all-consuming, Nico! And I can't. I can't do this anymore. It's like you're the only one I’m allowed to spend my time with! You've never liked any of my girlfriends!”

Nico opens her mouth as if to rebuff the statement, but Karolina stops her before she can. Her hands are shaking. She doesn’t know if with rage or some other feeling she doesn’t want to name.

“Ever! And I could believe that maybe, I don’t know.... that you're jealous or something, that you want to--” she stops her rant and shakes her head eyes trained on the wall, _it's just wishful thinking and nothing more_ , “But then you go and ask me to be your fake girlfriend. And like, what's your deal?”

She should stop talking now.

(She should have stopped talking right about yesterday.)

She doesn’t.

“I mean, what was the point of this? What's the point of kissing me behind closed doors, what's the point of dancing with me and saying all those things... what do you get out of this?”

“I-- I don’t know what you want me to say,” Nico falters.

“The truth,” Karolina's guts twist in a sick, pleasant sort of way, echoing Nico's words back to her, “We started this whole thing because you didn’t want to get back together with Victor, and now you're getting back together with Victor, so is that all. Are you--”

“We started this because we were tired of our mothers controlling our lives!” Nico interrupts her, and she doesn’t know if Nico is trying to convince her or herself.

“Are you sure? Because it just feels just like another game, and I’m sick and tired of playing it. You have to make up your mind.”

“What?”

“Get back together with Victor! Or don’t! But loop me in on it, because I can't, I literally can't keep doing this.”

“Doing what? Being my friend?”

Karolina looks her dead in the eye. “Don't pretend not to know. You're smarter than that. You owe me more than that.”

“Karolina,” Nico whispers shaking her head and breaking eye contact with the word, “I never wanted to hurt you.”

And, fuck.

She's so shitty.

She drops to the ground drained of all anger. “It seems to be the only thing we're capable of doing lately.”

Nico doesn’t say anything back, just stares at the ground in silence. Somehow this is even worse than her yelling back, even worse than the awkward silences they were sharing up until now.

“I didn’t know that was how you felt all these years, how you were feeling now,” Nico finally says, voice barely louder than a whisper.

Karolina shrugs her shoulders. “I tried well to hide it.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Gert says I’m allergic to conflict.”

“You kinda are,” Nico says with a soft smile.

The laugh that comes out of her mouth sounds tearful and broken to her own ears. “I know.”

“I'm sorry I didn’t know you felt so... restricted.”

“I don’t. Not that much,” she says, anger evaporating from her veins all at once- and how fucked up is it that an 'I'm sorry' is all it takes for Karolina to forgive her?- “I'm sorry too, I shouldn’t have blown up on you. I didn’t realize how much it was weighing on me.”

“Yeah, you shouldn’t have. But I am. Sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed so much.”

“I pushed, too.”

“No, you tried to stop me from pushing. It's my fault. I guess... I don’t know, I just got confused.”

“You got confused,” she repeats, blinking the pain away and staring at the yellow lightbulb flashing over their heads, trying to burn the tears away.

“Yeah, I shouldn’t have kissed you. It was a mistake.”

Karolina's heart is in so many pieces she doesn’t know where to start glueing them back together, or how to live with it.

(It was a mistake, it was a mistake, _it was a mistake._ )

She smiles to Nico anyway, because she'd much prefer to break her own heart over and over again than to lose her friendship- because being her friend is not second best, because Karolina would much prefer to keep her in her life in whatever capacity than to lose her to her own stupidity.

(So maybe this all-consuming stuff is as much her fault as it is Nico's, but Karolina kinda already knew that.)

But she doesn’t want to spoil the moment with heartbreak, so she smiles. “Yeah, no. I was being petty and with the Victor thing and--”

“I know,” Nico interrupts her with a hand on hers.

“I don’t want to lose you over some stupid act.”

“I know. And you won't,” Nico pauses, before saying the single string of words that could destroy Karolina Dean in this exact moment in history, “I only want you to be happy, Karolina.”

She knows what she wants to say to her, she can picture the sentences she wants to use, and the tone in which she wants to say them, but she can't get the words past the iron grip tightening against her throat.

She can feel the expectations constraining her like a rope, and she knows also that she can never say what she means to Nico, not if she wants to preserve what they have.

So she defuses the bomb still threatening their friendship, and swallows her heart.

“Look at us,” she bumps their shoulders together carelessly as if the small touch didn't send spikes of electricity to her core, “Communicating.”

Nico cracks a smile. “And we only had to be locked in a closet by one of our friends to do it.”

“Speaking of which, when do you think Gert is going to let us out?”

“I have no idea. I hope sometime soon, though, I still haven’t had breakfast.”

Karolina laughs and, as if by divine intervention, there's a sharp click as the door opens behind their backs sending both of them to the floor. Karolina opens her eyes to find a smiling Molly beaming over their heads.

“What are you two doing in here?”

Karolina looks up in a panic. “Please, tell me you didn’t just eavesdrop on everything we said.”

Molly frowns down at them. “I didn’t, why? What were you doing in the closet?”

“Nothing!” they say in unison.

“Okay,” Molly drawls the word out, a barely disguised look of disgust on her face, “We're having breakfast if you want to come.”

And just like that she's gone, leaving the two of them on the floor.

“She totally thinks we were fucking in the closet now,” Nico says.

“Please, don’t say that.”

“It's what she was thinking! We should be more careful.”

“Yep,” she sighs, standing up and offering a hand to Nico. She takes it and Karolina pulls her to her feet easily. “But still don’t say it.”

She turns to leave when Nico stops her.

“Hey, Karolina?”

Karolina pauses in the doorway, heart stopping in her chest, hope igniting again in her chest.

“Yeah?” she asks, turning once more towards Nico.

“You said you only ever been in love once the other night. How did it end?”

And Karolina wants to tell her.

God, she wants to tell her.

She wants to tell her about how love is an uncontrollable, all-encompassing thing, and she wants to tell her how she understands it all a bit better after this whole ordeal- so maybe some good has come out of it- but she bites her tongue because it doesn’t matter. It was a mistake- or it was to Nico, at least.

But Karolina is staring into Nico's earnest eyes, and she can't help but let a bit of the truth slip past her lips. “It hasn’t.”

She studies Nico's reaction to her words, but she doesn’t let a muscle slip from the blank mask she has on.

For a second it seems like she might speak again, her mask cracking slightly, but it's over as soon as it starts. Karolina's heart feels heavy in her chest, but she grinds her teeth and braves on. She needs to know.

“You never answered me either,” she says, trying her best to sound nonchalant about it, but knowing she's failing badly at it- and yeah, she truly is a masochist.

“About what?”

“If you've ever been in love.”

She shakes her head at her own transparency, while Nico just stares at her, unmoving and silent. When it seems Nico might never answer her, she turns away to the door again, shoulders slumping with a sigh.

“I think I am,” Nico whispers, stopping her in her tracks, and she does it so softly Karolina barely hears her- and that Nico's picking _now_ of all times to be cryptic, God.

Who does Karolina think she's fooling?

(It was a mistake, it was a mistake, it was a mistake.)

She knows who Nico is talking about, and it's obviously not her.

She had watched her around Victor lately, it was so painfully obvious they might as well be wearing a sign around their necks, and after the conversation they just had, after the things Nico had not said, well. She'd be stupid to read anything into this.

But Nico deserved to be happy with someone- no matter the sick feeling Karolina gets to her stomach at the thought of it.

(Karolina only wished it could have been her, making Nico happy.)

Knowing for sure that she isn’t the one providing that happiness doesn’t make it any less painful, though.

Maybe that's why she pretends not to have heard her and makes her way to the kitchen with tears that will remain unshed burning the back of her eyes.

**

The next day, they go back to the Minoru's.

Things seem to be back to normal, to the way things were before they started the break. They don’t kiss behind closed doors, they don’t have screaming matches in hallways and closets.

Normal.

If only Karolina could stop the spark that comes with each touch, with each brush of their hands, with each kiss.

(She could write entire, endless books about each kiss they shared: the small, sweet pecks in front of Nico's parents, the quick ones in greeting in front of their friends, the heated ones in overpriced bars to fend off unwanted advances- those Karolina had gotten _way_ too addicted to.)

Each kiss.

Because they still need to sell this charade, because Nico's parents still thought them madly in love- and they'd be only half right- and because, if Karolina were to be honest, she doesn’t seem to have it in her to just _stop_ kissing Nico.

She doesn’t know how to stop thinking about her, too, for that matter.

It's like her every thought has to come in a Nico's shape. It's not healthy. Probably.

What's worse is that she can't talk with anyone about it.

She can't talk about it with Gert, because she's still pretty pissed about the closet stunt she had pulled- _and_ because she'd tell Chase- and she can't talk about it with Molly either, or anyone who has known the two of them since they were in diapers. Which unfortunately knocks over most of her circle of friends.

She stares at her phone, Julie's number flashing up at her. It would take nothing to text her, or call her. Just a tap of her fingers.

And really, what does she have to lose?

The moments in between the dial and the answering of the phone are the most stressful of her life. She's debating hanging up and never calling anyone ever again when a voice comes up the other end.

“Hello?”

“Hey,” she says, relief seeping through her voice, “Figured I'd call since you gave me your number and all.”

Julie pauses for a few seconds. Then- “Who's this?”

“Karolina?”

Another pause. “Karolina who?”

“Really? How many other girls did you give your number to in the last two days?”

“Like five. Two Karolinas, one Mary and--”

“Oh wow,” she laughs for the first time in what feels like weeks, “Way to make a girl feel special.”

Julie laughs with her. “What's up? I'll be honest, I never thought you'd use it, but I’m glad you called.”

“Well, I might need to talk to someone and--”

“Who best than the only one outside of the mess?” Julie interrupts with another chuckle.

“Exactly.”

“It's cool, I understand.”

“You sure? I can always--”

“Don't worry about it, Dean. So, what's your latest dilemma?”

She's really glad she's having this conversation on the phone instead than face to face because she's pretty sure the words would never come to her if she were to.

“I think Nico is getting back together with her ex.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah. And then she kissed me and I don’t know if it was a heat of the moment thing or something else, but she said it was a mistake and I _agreed_ to that somehow.”

“Double shit.”

“So,” she takes a deep breath as she arrives at the question that has been leaving her up at night this past week, “How did you get over your best friend?”

“Are you sure you want me to answer?”

“No, but does it matter?”

She hears Julie chuckle in her hear. “I don’t know. I just did. I guess I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life pining after him, you know?”

And yeah, she can understand that. She starts nodding before realizing Julie can't see her. “Okay, awesome. But how did you actually do it?”

“I know you want me to say there's a special cure or remedy, Dean,” Julie sighs and all hope left for a clean-cut operation flies away from her chest, “But there isn’t. After a while, it goes away on its own and you just have to hang in there in the meanwhile.”

If only it were that easy.

“I've had a crush on her since we were fourteen, I don’t think it's just going to 'go away on its own'.”

“It will trust me. If there's really, truly nothing there, it'll fade away. I know it's hard, believe me, but you have to find... sometimes,” Julie takes a deep breath, and Karolina braces herself.

“Sometimes,” she continues, “You can only see one path to happiness and it seems like the only one possible, but you have to find that new route to happiness.”

 _A new route to happiness._ She likes that. But the weight of the words is too heavy for Karolina at this moment, and she has to make a joke to defuse the tension she feels in her bones.

“Wow, you're like my own personal bumper sticker.”

“Don't tease, Dean, or I might take my advice back.”

“Too late,” Karolina smiles genuinely even though Julie can't see it, “Thank you, Julie. It's nice not to feel so alone.”

“No problem. Still, can I ask a question? And don’t take it wrong, it's just pure curiosity.”

“Shoot.”

Julie hesitates for a few seconds, before asking: _“How_ are you and Nico even friends?”

“What?”

“Like, I just can't understand it on like a _physical level_ , how the two of you are friends.”

“I-- we grew up together.”

“Yeah, okay. I had childhood friends too, but most I lost on the way because we ended up being such completely different people... I didn’t mean to offend you, I’m just curious.”

“No, I understand,” she shakes her head, “It's like you look at us and you see two people that don’t seem to exist on the same plane of existence, right?”

“Yeah!”

“I get that a lot. I don’t know... we were never the kind of friends who dressed the same or liked the same bands, but that never stopped us. We always had something to talk about, you know?” Karolina smiles at the thought of it- of Nico.

“I could be alone with her on a desert island, and never run out of things to talk about with Nico. And isn’t that what old people tell you to search for? Someone you could never run out of things to talk about with?”

She sighs before continuing. “She makes me happy. She's all I ever needed to feel happy.”

Julie pauses for so long Karolina thinks for a second she may have hung up on her. “Well, shit. I may have to take it all back now. Are you sure it's as hopeless as you say it is?”

“Yeah, pretty sure,” she hears footsteps making their way towards the door, “I have to go now, but thank you for everything.”

“What are friends for?” is the last thing Julie says before hanging up and Karolina is left smiling.

Friends.

She'd like that. She kinda likes talking to someone who hasn’t known her since before she was born.

Still, there's a question burning in the back of her mind, a question she hadn’t asked Julie because much too afraid of the answer she may receive: what if part of Karolina doesn’t _want_ to get over her?

God, she's such a hopeless cause.

She drops on the bed with a sigh just as Nico comes in.

It's a testimony of how weird things are between the two of them behind closed doors, that Nico hesitates at the sight, eyes going back and forth from the door to Karolina. And it breaks her heart a little more than it already is, so she smiles and spreads her arms.

(She can't handle them being weird about this, too. Nico is her best friend, and she's tired of all the thinking twice thing she's been doing since the kiss that shall not be named.)

Nico, thankfully, smiles and takes place in her arms and for a moment all is well.

“Was that Julie on the phone?” Nico asks after what feels like hours, breaking the comfortable silence they had enveloped themselves in.

“Yeah.”

“That's...” Nico looks pained, a frown peeking out before smoothing down, “Cool.”

And Karolina is really _not_ in the right state of mind to analyse her reaction, so she lets it go. “Yeah, she was... giving me some advice.”

“Oh. On what?”

“Nothing important.”

Nico hums and stays quiet for a few minutes, playing absentmindedly with Karolina's fingers. “She's pretty.”

“Who?”

“Julie.”

She scrunches her eyebrows up. “I guess.”

“You guess?” Nico stops her fidgeting, dropping Karolina's fingers on her stomach while turning her head to look her in the eye, “You don’t think she's pretty?”

And what is she supposed to answer to that? _I don’t know, girls don't register in my mind as pretty anymore since I found out I’m actually in love with you. Crazy, right?_ Yeah, that'd end well.

(It was a mistake, it was a mistake, it was a mistake.)

“No, yeah. I dunno. Objectively, she is,” she ends up on saying, “She isn’t really my type, though.”

“What's your type then? Not tall and beautiful?” Nico asks sarcastically, an edge to her voice she doesn’t quite understand. And wouldn't it be hilarious if Karolina said _'you'_ right now? But that's about the worst idea she had in the last twenty-four hours so she just shrugs.

“I just don’t like her. Why is that so hard for you to believe?”

Nico doesn’t say anything, just resumes her toying with Karolina's fingers, and she guesses that's the most she'll ever get on the Julie subject with Nico. Not that she wants to explore said subject again, because then it'd end on Victor, and she really doesn’t want to think about that- or about him.

“I'm not getting back together with Victor, by the way,” Nico chimes in after a while of silence. Speak of the devil- or think, in this case.

“Okay?”

“I don’t like him like that anymore, not like I...”

Karolina tries not to let hope creep into her chest at that. Only Nico doesn’t seem to want to end the sentence so she prompts- “Not like?”

Nico shakes her head with a jerk. “Nothing, it's not important.”

And Karolina doesn't want to- she can't- get her hopes up again, not after how they were crushed to pieces the first time, but she has noticed that every time her eyes go to look at Nico, Nico is almost always already looking at her.

She's not sure what it could mean.

She's only sure of what it can't mean, and it can't be what she wants it to mean, because Nico had been clear, hadn’t she? It- them- had all been a giant mistake.

And she has to find that new route to happiness.

**

Two days later, Karolina still has no idea where, or how to find a new way to happiness. Julie's advice was simple in theory, but much harder in practice- how was she supposed to get over Nico if they were pretending to be in love?

For now, she had been focusing more on avoiding falling even more in love with Nico.

(Safe to say it wasn’t working very well, but she was trying at least.)

Karolina new strategy involved the two of them not being alone if not strictly necessary, which meant spending a lot of time with their friends. They still had to be affectionate, but Karolina could tone it down more and more with each teasing comment made by Gert, or Alex, or Molly, or Chase.

(God, she needed new friends.)

It wasn’t the most brilliant of strategies, but it was the only one Karolina had.

One of the only downsides of Karolina's plan was the constant infighting that was involved when her friends spent more than twenty-four consecutive hours together in one place, but she had spent both her middle _and_ high school life playing peacemaker.

She's a pro.

She can do this.

“No paintball!” she hears Nico shout, one floor down.

She can't do this.

“Why not?!” comes Molly outraged response, and yeah, she should go down before this evolves into another shouting match.

“Because last time we went it was literal bloodshed. Literal,” Karolina points out, poking her head down the stairs.

“You're so dramatic, it was only a few drops!”

“Chase broke Alex's nose!” Nico says incredulously.

“He was fine!”

“Was I? _Was I?_ ” Alex chimes in, “I needed stitches and my face was blue for a week.”

“It was an improvement, Wilder.”

Alex stands up slowly from where he's sitting on the couch, facing Chase with a set jaw. “Stein, I'd tread lightly if I were you.”

“Yeah?” Chase stands too, towering over him with a leer, “Care to put your face where your mouth is?”

“Gladly,” Alex sneers back.

Karolina should have come downstairs sooner.

And that's how Karolina finds herself standing in the middle of nowhere looking up at a giant sign over their heads that advertising the 'ultimate paintball experience'.

“I can't believe we're here as a result of toxic masculinity,” Nico says with a shudder.

“Tell me about it. I’m a pacifist.”

“We know, Karolina,” Alex says with a grin, “You made us all sign a petition in sixth grade to ban hallway fights.”

Nico laughs, slapping her thigh. “I forgot about that. God, you were such a nerd.”

“Well she didn’t improve with time, that's for sure,” Chase teases, nudging her shoulder.

“Hey!”

She doesn’t have the time to come up with a clever comeback.

“Karolina non-existent-middle-name Dean,” Gert sweeps in, before dragging her away from their friends to go stand near the entrance.

“Why are you full naming me?”

“You need to talk to her,” Gert continues like she hadn't spoken at all.

“I... did? You closed us in a closet together, remember?” she watches Nico from afar- she's punching Alex's shoulder, and the action should not elicit a fond smile from Karolina, but here she is, a smile on her face.

“You didn’t talk,” Gert says matter of factly, “Not really anyway. Because if you did I wouldn’t have to witness the torn glances across the room every time I’m somewhere near you two.”

Karolina's head whips back to Gert.

“There are no torn glances,” she denies quickly, cheeks heating up under Gert's stare, who just makes a sceptical sound from the back of her throat.

“Not on Nico's side, at least” she amends, tugging at a stray strand of hair that had escaped her braid.

“Then why is she staring at us right now?”

Karolina resists the urge to look back to Nico and prove Gert's point. “Maybe because you dragged me away like a madwoman on a mission?”

“Sure, let's go with that if you so desperately want to keep on lying to yourself.”

Karolina ignores her, stalking away with a frown. Maybe Gert should just learn to mind her own business.

Gert grabs her arm before she can get much farther. “Why do you think nobody was surprised by the two of you getting together? You two make sense together!”

“Gert. Stop.”

“You do! Why won't you _try_ at least?”

“Because I did try!” she shouts, attracting a few stares from their friends and some other paintball goers. She blushes and lowers her voice, mindful of the subject they're discussing, “I did try, and she rejected me. And I can't-- I can't do that again, I don’t think I can survive it.”

“Karolina...” Gert's voice goes soft, and Karolina almost can't handle it, “Just talk to her.”

“I can't! It's my feelings, my responsibility. I don’t want to push this on her.”

“But what if--” Gert tries again.

“Don't. Please, don't.”

“Okay, okay. But you have to see the way she looks at you, nobody is that good of an actor.”

And Karolina chooses not to dignify that with an answer because she _had_ noticed how Nico looked at her- how could she not? She notices everything about Nico- but she just doesn’t know what to do with the notion of it.

(Karolina should get some new friends, preferably some who'd listen to her and stop giving her contradictory advice.)

They join their friends again, Nico sending a questioning glance her way. She shakes her head into a no and smiles until Nico smiles back, before brushing her hand carefully against hers.

Gert sighs dreamily, a hand on her chest. “Oh, to be young and flirt with my girlfriend in front of the paintball place.”

Nico's eyes squint into a thin slit, giving her the most fear-inducing, death glare Karolina has ever witnessed. Gert just laughs- and Karolina doesn’t know whether she's impressed or just plain ol' terrified by her reaction.

“If you two are done, we're deciding teams,” Chase continues, glossing over the tension as usual.

Karolina snaps back to attention. “I'm guessing you two maniacs want to be captains.”

Alex grins at her. “You guess right, Dean. Also, you and Nico are going to be on separate teams because we don’t want to be thrown out because you two are making out on the field.”

“What makes you think I won't be making out on the field with her regardless?” Nico asks with a cocky smirk- a cocky smirk that immediately makes Karolina want to make out with her, so she may have a point.

“Your competitive streak,” Chase answers, not missing a beat- and he makes a compelling argument, too, so kudos- “The teams are Alex, Nico, and Molly, against us three.”

“Whatever,” Nico huffs, “You're going down.”

“That's what she said.”

“No jokes,” she slaps Chase's shoulder, “Focus.”

“Yeah!” Molly exclaimed, “Karolina is the biggest one already, she doesn’t need help.”

(She really needs new friends.)

“Hey!” Nico squeaks indignantly in her defence, “She's not the biggest joke!”

“No, Nico's right,” Alex continues in a teasing lilt, “She's the biggest one, _clearly,_ she's dating her after all.”

“I've dated _you,_ too. What does that say about you?” Nico snarks back.

“Unfortunate tragedies. What about you?”

“You've turned me away from men for good, so you tell me.”

Karolina should really intervene before something happens. Like murder.

“Okay,” she pushes Alex away from Nico, sending him towards the entrance with a slap on his back, “Let's not kill each other before we even get inside.”

Nico scowls, eyes trained on him. “Why do I have to be on _his_ team?”

“Now, don’t be grumpy just because I’m on Karolina's team and you aren’t,” Gert pats her face twice sardonically, “I promise I won't steal her away. This time.”

If looks could kill, Gert would probably be incinerated, dead, and six feet under by now.

“She's kidding!” Karolina steps in, shoving Gert off Nico.

“Am I?”

She grasps Gert by her shoulders. “Ok, we're going now. Good luck.”

“You'll be the one needing that!” Nico shouts after them.

“Good comeback,” Gert shouts back. Karolina hits her.

“Gert,” she hisses, “I swear to God if you don’t cut it out...”

Gert looks at her with her best impression of an innocent person. “What? I’m just making you realize she loves you back.”

“How? By pissing her off?”

“By enlightening her to the fact that you're a catch.”

“No, you're being a little shit and you know it.”

Gert waves her off without a care, before wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “C' mon, let's win this thing.”

**

They did _not_ win that thing.

It ended more in like a draw, or however you call it when both parties lose in a miserable fashion to a team of twelve years old at a birthday party. Not their brightest moment.

“I knew we shouldn’t have played,” Nico grumbles, kicking a stray rock on the sidewalk

“C' mon it could have been way worse.”

“How?!” Nico shouts, gesturing to their very dirty, very paint-stained, very bloody, clothes.

And yeah, fair.

“You could have lost a tooth?” she tries, cringing at her own words when Nico turns with a glare to her.

“I'm covered in bruises and I have a slash across my cheek,” Nico deadpans, but there's a smile creeping on the corners of her mouth. Karolina nudges her softly, eliciting a real- if small- smile.

“But do you have all your teeth?” Gert chimes in, slapping a hand on Nico's shoulder, and just like that Nico's smile evaporates replaced by a positively murderous look- and Karolina has half a mind to let her have her pick at Gert.

“Do you want to keep all of yours?”

And, okay. Intervening now. Even if having Nico murder Gert seemed more and more appealing by the second.

“O-kay, Rambo, let's not make a trip to the hospital this late,” she grabs one of Nico's arms in hers, “It was fun, but we should go. Our Lyft is here.”

She drags Nico to the curb on the street where she told the driver they would be. She checks her phone, leaning against the wall with a sigh. When she looks up, she sees Nico picking at her upper cheek, prodding and poking the cut.

“Stop,” she reaches over and takes Nico's hand off her skin, before brushing her thumb under the cut, “It'll scar if you keep at it.”

“Is it really that bad?” Nico asks, voice almost a whisper.

“Nah, you're gonna be fine. if you stop touching it. Besides,” she winks at her, “I hear chicks dig scars.”

Nico lifts her chin, eyes big and sharp and altogether too captivating. She drops the hand on Nico's cheek, looking away, suddenly aware of how little space there was between them. She should be doing better.

“Do you?”

“Uh?”

“Nothing,” Nico says, before leaning a bit into Karolina.

And Karolina feels like she's missing something obvious, something big, something important she should know, but she doesn’t quite get what, and before she can pinpoint it, their ride arrives and Nico steps away from her to get in.

Nico falls asleep against her shoulder on the way back, and she's still sleeping by the time they arrive, so she pays the driver and slips her arm under Nico's knees, carrying her inside.

She slips Nico under the covers careful not to wake her, before slipping off her own jeans and getting into bed beside her. Nico makes her sleepy way to her side, pressing into her without even opening her eyes.

And there's that feeling again.

**

The following day, her morning starts with a phone call and goes downhill from there- and really Karolina should have stopped answering her phone in the mornings when it's her mother, nothing good ever comes out of them.

“Hullo?” she mumbles in her phone.

“Karolina, are you sure this relationship with Nico is a good idea?” her mother asks in her most caring and worried tone- worthy of that globe sitting on her parents' mantle, she's sure.

And it's a much too weird conversation starter for Karolina- who just woke up- to comprehend.

“What?”

“Are you being difficult on purpose?”

“I _just_ woke up.”

“No matter. Paparazzi got a picture of you and Nico bloody outside some building, they're talking about an abusive relationship. Are you sure you're in a good place?”

Karolina has to laugh at the theatrics of it all- her mother calling her at ass o'clock in the morning worried she's in a bad relationship.

“Yeah, yeah. Don’t worry. We just went to paintball and things got... heated. Everyone is alright, though.”

“That's... wonderful.”

And that would be great. If Karolina actually believed her mother. Which, she doesn’t. She has been meaning to ask her since the gala what exactly was her problem with Nico, and her morning filter is not as good as it was while she still lived under her parent's roof.

“What's your problem with her?”

“What?”

“You heard me. What's your deal with Nico?”

Her mother doesn’t answer her for a bit, and just when Karolina thinks she may never do- “I just worry that Nico isn’t right for you.”

Karolina shouldn’t take this much offence on behalf of her fake girlfriend, she's aware of the fact- even if she's very much in real love with said fake girlfriend, but that's beside the point- and maybe her mother is right considering the events of the last week, but she really doesn’t give a damn at the moment.

(And well, this is at least something they haven't argued about before, a novel and exciting experience if just for that.)

She presses her lips together tightly to keep from blurting out the wrong thing. “I don’t think it's up to you to decide who is or isn’t right for me.”

“I'm your mother Karolina! It's my job!”

“And I love her! You never had a problem with Nico before I told you we were together. But now you do, and I don’t understand! You never had a problem with Xavin. So why now? What changed?”

“Nothing changed, I just never had a problem with him.”

A beat of silence. It takes a few times before Karolina gets what her mother is saying, but still, she really wants to be wrong- “With who?”

“I-- you know who I mean, Karolina.”

She thinks she does, but God, she really wants to have heard wrong. She really doesn’t know how to deal with the fact if she hadn’t. “What did you just call them?”

“Karolina, I just want what's best for you. And Nico--”

Anger starts to boil in her veins, bubbling to the surface in a stream of overpowering lava, threatening to explode at any minute. “Do you? Or do you not want the proof that I’m not straight plastered all over some tabloids?”

“Now, Karolina. Be considerate.”

And for a moment the rage is all she has left. “Considerate?”

“Karolina--” her mother starts again, with that obnoxiously patronizing tone and yeah, she's done. She's so done.

“No. I am done pretending we're alright, that every phone call we have isn’t wrapped in three layers of criticism, that you're not a homophobic, transphobic _bitch!_ And I am sick and tired of playing the obedient daughter!” she shouts in her phone, before ending the call with an angry swipe.

It's in moments like these that Karolina wished for a flip phone once again, and- as she hasn’t got one in her hand right about now- she settles for launching her phone on the bed with a furious throw.

_How dare she?!_

She knows that later she'll feel the reality of what she shouted at her mother crash in on her, that she'll feel the bitter pangs of regret the moment she'll put her head on a pillow to sleep tonight, but at this moment there's just the bittersweet taste of vindication mixed with triumphant rage.

She hears two cautious knocks against the door before Nico's concerned face peeks in. “You okay?”

“Not really.”

Nico pushes the door open slowly. “I heard screaming.”

“I have caller id, why do I never use it?”

She's too mad and at the same time too excited to stay still. Her hands are shaking. She clenches them into a fist.

“What happened?” Nico asks, taking small steps towards her and all in all approaching her like she would a ticking bomb.

“My mother happened.”

“Yeah, no. I got that.”

“She just... she just makes me so mad!” she exclaims and starts pacing around the room.

“I can see that. Do you want to talk about it?”

She stops for a second, caught in the way Nico's face pulled into one of love and concern and- “How can she say you're not right for me?”

“Wait, what?”

Karolina doesn’t answer her, too into her head to understand anything else. “I thought she was fine with me being gay, but apparently it's fine as long as _nobody_ knows.”

“She said I’m not right for you?” Nico tries again, eyes looking empty and out of focus.

“Yeah I know, right? And you know, I wondered if when she introduced Xavin to me, she knew that they were non-binary, or if it was another fucked up attempt at turning me straight,” she stops her pacing, looking straight into Nico's eyes, her hands gripping the hem of her shirt like a lifeline, “Guess I know now.”

“Karolina...”

She shakes her head. “And then after I broke up with them, I knew my mom wasn't happy, but I thought it was on my behalf. But no, apparently she preferred it when I was with someone the press could misgender as male.”

“That's... so fucked up.”

“Right? How could she-- It is fucked up! She's my-- she's my mother!”

“I know.”

“She's my mother! She should want me to be happy! She should... she should-- It's not f- fair,” the words break out into a sob, and she crashes down on the floor.

Her shoulders shake with the effort to stop the crying, to just keep on being fine. Then she feels Nico's arms wrap around her, and she lets it all crash down.

“I know,” Nico says quietly again, holding her tight.

They stay like this until her every sob has receded until she doesn’t have any tears left to cry for her mother- or maybe she's been crying for herself, for the things she's being deprived of.

Nico just holds her whispering words of comfort in her ears, and Karolina loves her so much more for it.

“Do you want to go for a run?” Nico whispers after a while, unable to hide the aversion for the word run in her question.

Karolina's laugh comes out watery and wrong. “You hate running.”

“You don’t.”

It's such a simple answer Karolina is caught off guard, faltering as Nico looks up at her with too earnest eyes, and Nico must take it as reluctance as she switches tactics.

“Or maybe we could go to that art exhibit you wanted to see. The big one at... I want to say LACMA?” Nico trails off, a twinkle in her eyes Karolina recognizes all too well.

“Okay, what are you trying to do?”

“Nothing. I was just in the mood of enriching and broaden my--”

“Yeah, as if. Now I know for sure you're up to something,” Karolina narrows her eyes playfully.

“I'm not!” Nico defends hotly, a hand making its way up her arm, “I just want to spend some time with you in a boring museum.”

“Ok, see that's why I don’t trust it!”

Nico pouts slightly, jutting her bottom lip out in such a cute fashion, Karolina might just die right there in her arms on the floor of her crush's childhood bedroom. “So you don’t want to go?”

“That's not what I said.”

The grin she receives is a thousand watts.

“C' mon, get dressed. I'll grab the keys.”

As Nico stalks out of the room, Karolina wonders what she did that was so absolutely right in her last life that she got to have Nico in this life.

She hopes she gets to be just as lucky in her next.

(She's _really_ not doing a good job of getting over Nico.)

**

They're twenty minutes in before Karolina's mind- or is it her heart- betrays her.

Because Karolina really wants to kiss her.

Nico is staring at some big, gorgeous canvas Karolina would usually find very hard to tear her eyes away from, one of those masterpieces of another time, of another lovestruck painter and their muse, and all Karolina can do is stare at Nico and dream of kissing her.

And she really, _really_ wants Nico to want to kiss her, too.

It's gotten so much harder to shut down that part of her brain now that she knows how Nico's lips taste, the way she sounds when Karolina's tongue...

“One of these days, I'll see your work on these walls. I just know it,” Nico says, interrupting Karolina's spiralling thoughts. It takes a few seconds before the words process in her mind.

“Nico...”

“I mean it. You're so talented. I know it's not really my thing- feelings and stuff- but Karolina, you're one of the most amazing people I have ever met, and I can't wait to see what you'll become. And if your mother can't see that, well it's her problem.”

(Karolina really, _really_ wants to kiss her.)

She squishes the want in some remote part of her heart, pretends it was never there in the first place, and resorts to hug her instead.

“Thank you,” she whispers in her hair that still smells of Karolina's shampoo, and she would say something- that thing is not _cheap-_ but she really likes it when Nico smells like her.

“Of course,” Nico whispers back, “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

(And if Karolina doesn’t quite mean it in the same way Nico does... well, it's nobody's business but hers.)

Her phone keeps on vibrating in her pocket, but Karolina doesn’t want to check it, not when Nico is looking at her like this, not when she can pretend, just for a second, that Nico loved her too.

Later, when they finally come back to the Minoru's, she notices the spike in her Instagram's notifications and knows the reason behind the incessant beeping of her phone. She squints at the numbers, scrolling through more and more new followers and likes to her posts.

“Nico?”

“Yes?” Nico asks back, innocent smile in place on her face like it belongs there.

“Why do I have like a hundred new followers on Instagram? And why are they all your followers, too?”

“Let's just say I posted a few candid of you in that museum with some very cutesy caption about masterpiece- you'd be proud, really. And vague posted a bit on twitter,” Nico bites her lips, barely holding back a smile, “Of that, I think you're going to be a little less proud.”

And how could she keep on the façade of suspicion, when Nico looks at her like that? Karolina shakes her head with a laugh. “Why?”

“To piss off your mother,” Nico shrugs like it's nothing, “It was in the deal we made, wasn't it?”

“Okay, but why?”

“Because she can't keep on ignoring your sexuality, because she made you cry, because she doesn’t know what she's missing by pushing you away,” Nico cringes- probably knowing how sappy she was getting and hating the notion of people knowing she had _feelings-_ “And, well, I owed you one, didn’t I?”

Karolina laughs again. “Yeah, but I thought more 'I'll pay for your ice-cream' than wage holy war against my mother.”

Nico blushes a little before glancing away. “What are friends for?”

And she knows she should focus on the word friend- because that's what they are, friends, best friends, gal pals- but she can't help but lean in just a little.

It's just Nico and her, and the urge to make the same mistake.

She crosses the room and falls into Nico's arms, squishing her against the mattress. She breathes her in and makes an effort not to start crying on her shoulder another time.

“Thank you.”

“For what?” Nico mumbles against her neck.

And Karolina wished, not for the first time, that she had somewhere within herself better words to tell Nico what she felt, how grateful she was of her presence in her life- but she was an artist, not a writer, and words were never kind to her.

But she can try.

(For Nico, she'd always try.)

“For being what I need always, for believing in me, for loving me.”

Nico leans back from the hug. “You don’t have to thank me for that.”

Karolina means to say something back, she's sure, she only gets a little caught up on the way Nico looks up close, how her eyes sparkle in this light, how beautiful she is.

She can't help but lean in a little.

And just when she thinks Nico is about to lean in too, her phone starts ringing.

She jolts away, scrambling for her phone. She curses before muting it.

“My mother. Caller id. I remembered this time.”

Nico laughs, and Karolina forgets everything else.

(And yeah, Karolina had been right. There's no such thing as over Nico.)

**

She's not sure what they do in the next few days, she's not sure about anything lately, really. She's been revisiting every instance in her life, trying to connect the dots that brought her to this moment in time- in love with Nico and faking a relationship with her- and she's coming up empty.

(She's also categorizing Nico's action towards her with scientific precision, trying to find some base to Gert's theory that she's in love with her too. She's so damn confused.)

So each day passes in a blur of robotic motions and spaced out conversations. The only moment she's broken from the spell is when Nico kisses her, because no matter what happens kissing Nico sets her alight.

And then, all at once, it's done.

The break is over and they're going back to their apartment and away from prying eyes.

Karolina had sometimes wondered how it would all end, what would happen once they ended the fake-dating business they had put themselves through because surely it had to end. No matter the fact that Karolina had no inclination to ever let go of Nico, she still knew someday she had to.

So, yes, she had wondered how it would all end, but she had never, never once thought how it'd feel, or that she'd feel this heartbroken about it.

“Tomorrow we go back...”

“Yeah, it's been a crazy few weeks, uh?”

Karolina lets out a strained laugh. “Yeah. Crazy.”

Nico scratches her nose, eyes bouncing in every direction and away from Karolina's. “But not bad, right?”

“No. Not if you don’t count the two days where we would barely speak to each other. And the parties.”

“Oh, _those_ were torture. But I guess kissing you wasn’t so terrible,” Nico says lightly, and Karolina fights back the automatic, hopeful jolt of her heart at the words.

Or maybe she shouldn’t.

Maybe her feelings are not as one-sided as she makes them out to be, maybe Nico loves her too- or maybe she's projecting super hard right now, it's really hard to tell.

She shakes herself out of the daze. “You weren’t too bad yourself.”

“Goodnight, Karolina,” Nico steps on her tiptoes and leaves a burning kiss against her cheek, before turning towards the stairs. Karolina's heart stops in her chest for a minute, before kick-starting into an impression of a thousand drums out of tune and out of tempo.

She watches her leave, her hand slowly going to the place where Nico's lips had just been. She turns towards the door, expecting to see someone- Nico's mom, or dad, or, hell, even Gert- but there's nobody.

There's just Karolina, standing alone in-between crossroads, and maybe this time a leap of faith is warranted.

**

They stepped into the apartment quietly, the only noise between them the jingle of Karolina's keys when they fall into the bowl by the door.

Gert was right.

(God, she hated it when she was right.)

They needed to talk about it.

Like really talk about it, not half-ass a conversation turned argument to then end it all on a cryptic note.

She was growing more and more weary of this fake girlfriend skit they've built for themselves, and it leaves the worst after-taste in her mouth. She wants to know where they stand. She wants to find a better footing.

So she does.

(Screw secondary routes to happiness, or tertiary, Nico is every road, every path possible, every way to her happiness.)

“I'm all out of excuses,” the words come without her ever deciding to say them, like the dam had been broken the moment she had decided she wouldn’t lie to Nico anymore.

Nico turns slowly to her. “Sorry?”

Karolina takes a deep steadying breath, and powers on- she's tired of this dance and game they have been on since break started- or even before that, Karolina doesn’t know anymore. “There are no parents to piss off, no friends to convince, no one here but us. And I ran out of excuses to kiss you.”

For a second she's afraid she may have broken her, with the way Nico's jaw drops.

“You could-- you could find one?” Nico says hesitant and shy, sentence ending more like a question than an answer.

“What if I'm tired of pretending? What if I want to kiss you, and that's that?” she crosses the room in two strides, determined- at least until their lips are barely apart, then shyness creeps into her confidence act, “Is that okay?”

Nico smiles and stops looking like a deer in headlights. “More than okay.”

She doesn’t wait for Nico to change her mind, or for her phone to ring, or for something else to interrupt this moment, and bridges the gap between them.

And it's not like this is their first kiss- Karolina may be tired of pretending, but she doesn’t want to forget _everything-_ but it's so hesitant it may as well be. Their lips move together softly, like it would all turn out to be a dream if they uttered a whisper, if their lips did more than just brush softly together.

It's close to magic.

It's close to heaven.

It's close to home.

She pulls away and Nico whines her disapproval. She can't contain the laughter at the sound, happy and bright. “Is it still okay?”

“I don’t know, but you should do it again. Just to be sure.”

When Karolina doesn’t bridge the gap fast enough, Nico takes matters in her own hands and rocks onto her tiptoes and kisses her again.

At first, they're both smiling too much for it to go anywhere, but then Nico nips at her lower lip and Karolina lets out a moan.

Blinding and persistent and warm, light grows out of Karolina's chest and settles in the back of her throat, in her chest, in her lungs, making it hard to breathe without it stretching across her chest.

“Don't do this to me, not if you don’t mean it.”

She sees as Nico's eyes get wide and hurt, and Karolina realizes what gross insecurity she had just let slip past her lips.

“I didn’t mean to say... I know. I know you're not toying with my feelings, I just--” she rushes to add in a panic, breaking away from Nico. Nico catches her before she can get too far.

“I know,” Nico takes her face into her hands, wiping some straight strands out of her eyes with a fond smile, “I love you.”

“You do?” she asks, voice made breathless by hope. She's sure that, were Nico not holding onto her- grounding her- she might fly away.

(And she finally understood what she was missing.)

Nico chokes out a laugh. “How could I not?”

“You said it was a mistake.”

“I was scared. I love you, how could that be a mistake?”

Karolina knows tears are springing from her eyes. She doesn’t care. “I thought you didn’t, I thought you were just acting.”

“I'm not that good of an actress,” Nico kisses her tears away, then her lips again, like she couldn’t stand not to with their faces so close together, “And neither are you.”

She raises one eyebrow, more than a little sceptic. “So you knew from the start?”

Nico looks away, hands playing with a strand of Karolina's hair. “I had... a hunch.”

“A hunch. Really now?”

“More like I had hope,” she rectifies, tone suddenly shy, “You kept looking at me like-- but I couldn’t...”

“Like what?”

Nico tilts her head in question, and it's just too cute for her not to kiss her again.

“How did I look at you?” she whispers against her lips. She's not very focused on the question, if she's being honest, way more preoccupied with the way the light bounces off Nico's eyes.

Suddenly shy, Nico turns her head sideways, denying access to her lips- but Karolina is fine with that, she'll just switch her attentions to Nico's jaw instead. She brushes a kiss there, and Nico answers her.

“Like you loved me.”

“I do,” Karolina presses her smile against Nico's skin, “I love you.”

“Well, I'd hope so. Otherwise, this would be like real awkward.”

“Shut up.”

“Make me.”

She shakes her head and she does just that, as she falls laughing on Nico's mouth, light and warm and right.

An undefined amount of kissing later, they're curled into the couch together something playing on the TV in the background, even if Karolina doesn’t know exactly what, too preoccupied with Nico to think about anything else that wasn’t how their body fit together.

“Do you maybe want to try again?” asks Nico, breaking the silence.

“Try what?”

“To go on a date. With me. Somewhere nice.”

“Again? Wait,” she squints her eyes suspiciously, “Was that morning a _coffee_ date?”

Nico buries her head into Karolina's neck, letting out a soft puff of air there. “It was supposed to be,” she whispers so quietly Karolina barely hears her.

Karolina's mouth falls open. “That's why you were so pissed at Julie interrupting us.”

“Well, that and the fact she was all over you.”

“So you were jealous,” Karolina smirks and Nico swats at her arm, “Good to know.”

“She's very pretty. And don't act all disaffected now, I saw the way you looked at Victor.”

“Okay, first of all, you're literally the prettiest girl I've ever seen--”

“Well, you have to say that. You love me,” Nico mumbles through a blush, looking away suddenly bashful.

“I do love you, but that's not why I’m saying it. You're like out of this world gorgeous, there's no competition.”

Nico shoves her lightly. “Stop.”

“It's the truth! Why would I look at other girls when you're right here?”

Nico shakes her head, like she still doesn’t believe her, before leaning up into a soft kiss. She sighs against Nico's lips, burying a hand in her hair and draws her in. She presses more insistently against Nico, who makes a soft, choked noise that shatters her to her core. She's about to push her on her lap when Nico pulls away.

“What's second?”

“What?” she mumbles, her mind still too caught up in Nico's lips to catch up on what she's asking.

“You said first of all, what's second?”

Karolina blinks a few times before she gets what she's saying.

“Is this what you really want to talk about right now? Really?”

“Yes.”

Karolina sighs, before acquiescing to Nico's request. “That you literally were Victor's girlfriend, so that was justified jealousy.”

“There's no justified jealousy.”

“Okay, Gert,” she teases before another more terrifying thought comes to her, “Oh my god, Gert! She'll be insufferable.”

“Who cares? So?”

“So what?”

“Will you go on a date with me?”

“Yes.”

**

It's not really a traditional first date.

Then again it's not like there's anything traditional about them. She doesn’t think there are many relationships that start out as a means to piss off one's parents and then develop into something huge and unavoidable and real.

It's not a traditional first date, because Karolina doesn’t have to go pick her date up- since her date actually _lives_ with her.

It's not a traditional first date, because Karolina already knows many of the little things about Nico that people usually asked on first dates- there are many truths to Nico Minoru, and Karolina can't wait to learn all the ones she doesn’t know yet.

It's not a traditional first date, but that doesn’t mean Karolina is any less nervous about this than she would be for a traditional one.

What if Nico doesn’t want to go out with her anymore after it? What if it all goes wrong?

(God, what if it all goes _well?)_

Maybe that's why she's face-timing Gert, panicking about what to wear and with half the contents of her wardrobe strewn across the floor.

“Is that one of Nico's t-shirts?”

“I don’t know,” Karolina looks down on herself and- yeah, it's black and more than a bit short on her exposing her belly button, “It's probably one of Nico's.”

Her eyes grow two sizes. “Is wearing one of her t-shirts allowed? They didn’t cover that in lesbian school.”

“Probably not,” Gert pulls a thoughtful face, “But I'd have to check on the manual.”

Karolina throws another t-shirt on the growing pile of clothes on the ground.

“It's going to be fine,” Gert says for the umpteenth time. She had stopped trying to make her tone reassuring after the fourth time she had to say it, now sporting a boring one instead. It doesn’t make Karolina feel any better.

She takes the top she's wearing off, throwing it onto the growing pile on the floor. “It won't be if I show up naked!”

“I think Nico would appreciate that, actually,” a disembodied voice in the background points out.

“Not helping, babe.”

“Shut up Chase,” she growls, struggling with pushing the very skinny jeans up her thighs- seriously, who invented these traps anyway?

“Are you wearing heels with those?”

“Are you kidding? I struggle to kiss Nico as it is, I’m wearing the flattest shoes I own. And heels are just a contraception invented by men to make our butts look smaller and make it harder for us to run away, right?” she quotes with a smug smile.

Gert looks properly struck for a moment. Then- “I think I'm in love with you.”

“Oh my God, finally! Chase, I’m sorry but she's finally realized we're made for each other. Kiss her goodbye one last time, I'm picking her up in ten.”

Chase doesn’t even give her the satisfaction of playing along, answering instead in a bored monotone. “Sure, but I won't be the one telling Nico.”

“Telling me what?”

Karolina ducks behind the shirt she's holding with a yelp, ending the phone call with a panicked swipe. Which is quite the ridiculous reaction considering she's holding a crop top and she's 5'8 feet of dumbass lesbian.

Nico doesn’t outright laughs in her face, but she can see the mirth in her eyes. “Nothing I haven’t seen before, love.”

Karolina's heart downright melts at the pet-name. She shakes her head. “Yeah, but it's different now.”

“Oh, of course,” Nico chuckles but turns on her heel nonetheless, humouring her, “Well, do you want me to leave so you can plan your romantic escape with Gert?”

She blushes when she realizes Nico had heard her panicking with Gert on the phone. Fantastic first date impression.

Only she's right.

She _had_ seen Karolina in any state of undress possible, she had seen her in all of her worst outfits, in all of the worst haircuts of her life- 2011 was _not_ a good year for Karolina's hair- and suddenly Karolina wasn’t so nervous about clothes anymore.

“No, I’m being dumb,” she ignores Nico's objections at the name-calling and throws the crop top in her hand on, tying a red flannel over her hips, “Well, what do you think?”

Nico's eyes go soft. “I think you look gorgeous.”

“Thank you. So do you,” Karolina compliments back, cheeks aflame.

And she does, wearing those _really_ short shorts Karolina _really_ liked, a black strappy top, and a black choker that sent Karolina's mind places it shouldn’t be right about now, not when they have to get ready for their first date.

(Nico makes Karolina want- desperately, completely, utterly want.)

Nico shifts her weight under her stare uncharacteristically shy, exposing even more skin somehow and well, fuck it. She makes her way to Nico slowly, resting a hand on her hips trailing the short length of her shorts to her waist and back.

Nico gasps softly. Some primordial part of her brain desperately wants to hear that noise again.

“Karolina...”

“I like how you say my name,” she whispers curving against her.

“And how is that?” Nico asks, still trying hard to play cool and collected, but Karolina's other hand is on her jaw and she can feel her heartbeat flutter against her fingers loud.

“Like a prayer.”

She brushes their lips together, living for the way Nico trembles against her. It's addicting, Nico's love. She'd be more than happy to keep on getting high on it forever.

Karolina recovers first, opening her eyes slowly and watching Nico's chest flutter up and down. “You didn’t make a reservation for some restaurant or something, right?”

“Not exactly.”

Karolina kisses her again, enjoying the way Nico's lipstick ends up more than smudged by it. “So we could just stay here, keep kissing...”

“Don't tempt me, I want to do this- us- right,” Karolina's heart melts on the spot as Nico takes a step back and away from her, then offers her arm, “Shall we?”

She sighs jokingly, making Nico laugh, but she takes it and steps out into her probably last first date ever.

(No pressure.)

It takes her about half an hour to feel kinda ashamed of her freak out earlier because dating Nico is simple and it comes as easy to her as breathing. They come together seamlessly, without second thoughts and Karolina loves it.

It's not a traditional first date.

It's way better.

They walk to the cinema, to watch one of those forgettable, dumb action movie Nico had somehow developed an obsession for- she's blaming Molly for this- and Karolina pays for the tickets because she had won the coin toss, and Nico gets them popcorn in retaliation.

The movie is stupid and funny and probably entertaining but Karolina could not for the life of her tell what happens in a single scene, much too busy committing Nico to memory to pay any attention to what was going on the screen.

(And she feels giddy because she's _allowed_ to look, now.)

They stop for ice-cream on their way back and it's kind of perfect.

Their free hands swing together as they walk, and she's sure they make quite the picture- her sunny looks next to Nico's Goth ones, a melting cone in their hands- but she doesn’t care. She has never been happier.

There's a bit of ice-cream stuck on Nico's upper lip, which means she's morally obliged to kiss it away, and when she does she tastes dark chocolate on her lips.

And actually, scratch that. No kind of. It's perfect.

“Be my girlfriend,” she whispers when they break apart, “For real this time.”

It felt fitting to be the one doing the asking this time, if only just for the way Nico is looking at her now.

“I'd like that.”

Not a single moment of hesitation. What they needed to say all along, what they’ve been dancing around for years, finally finding existence in the air between them.

Karolina's smile gets even wider and she kisses her _girlfriend_ again.

They make it to their apartment, Karolina wouldn’t know how exactly, though, much too preoccupied with Nico to notice anything else.

She starts to search for her keys when Nico pulls her through their joined hands, Karolina crashes into her body with a laugh. She cradles Nico's cheek, inching closer until their faces are barely a breath apart.

“I don’t want to go in just yet.”

“Just because we go in doesn’t mean we have to stop.”

Karolina brushes her thumb across Nico's lips. “I like the way you think.”

They crash into the apartment, a flurry of hands and lips and clothes thrown on the floor.

It takes a few minutes before they manage to make it to Karolina's room, derailed a bit- _a lot_ \- by Nico pushing Karolina against a wall and making good use of their height difference to burn a trail of hickeys down her neck.

When they finally make it into her room, though, she hesitates.

Because, of course, they had seen each other in various states of undress before. Of course. They had been best friends for almost two decades, they had changed in the same room before, for Pete's sake, Karolina had walked in on her changing just the other week!

But there's something different about this.

Something reverent in the way her hands pull down Nico's shirt, something holy in the way the soft, pale skin gets revealed slowly, ever so slowly, to Karolina's wanting eyes, something religious in the way Nico's hands strip her bare, too.

She doesn’t realize she's shaking until Nico's hand come to steady hers, doesn’t realize there are tears in her eyes until Nico's fingers brush them away softly, doesn’t realize Nico is crying too until she kisses her tears away gently. She brushes her nose over hers and kisses her mouth, too.

“Can I kiss you?” she whispers, and for some reason that makes Nico laugh and hide her face into Karolina's shoulder.

(She didn’t always manage to make Nico laugh like that- carefree, young, loud- so Karolina wished and wished and wished they could stay in this moment forever, frozen in laughter.)

“You just did that.”

Karolina doesn’t know how to explain the endless stream of feelings rushing through her veins. She tries anyway. “I didn’t do it right.”

When Nico nods, face still hidden in her neck pressing a smile into it. She takes her face into her hands, bends down and she kisses her.

“Again?” she asks once more, and when Nico gives her consent with a jerk of her head bathed in fond exasperation, she brings their lips together trying to wordlessly convey to Nico everything floating through her mind- half-finished thoughts about fate and destiny and being meant to be.

She knows she couldn’t voice them in any other way that isn’t with her mouth on Nico's, worshipping her in the only way Karolina knows how to. Nico's breath comes out shaky when she breaks the kiss.

But she hasn’t quite managed to express it in the way Nico's deserved, so she asks another time. “And again?”

This time it's Nico closing the gap, surging on her tiptoes and crashing into Karolina like a wave on sea cliffs, her lips tasting of downpours and salt.

They fall onto the bed, and for once, Karolina doesn’t think of anything but want.

**

When she wakes up it's in her bedroom- _their_ bedroom, now? Karolina would have to ask, she doesn’t want to just _assume-_ with Nico's arm thrown over her midriff, her face buried in her hair.

It takes a moment before all the details of the night come to her, but when they do a slow, wide smile breaks her face in two.

She takes Nico's hand in hers, pressing a kiss to the inside of her wrist, and snuggling back until her whole body is pressed against her girlfriend's front. Another smile wider than the first overcomes Karolina's face.

Her _girlfriend._

And for real this time.

She presses a hand to her chest, trying to keep in the feelings threatening to flutter away like butterflies.

It's pitch dark outside, and for once Karolina doesn’t mind one bit. She shifts in Nico's grip, propping herself on one elbow to look at Nico's sleeping face.

And it's still early, but Karolina wouldn’t mind if she got to wake like this for the rest of her life- she'd even face the thousands U-haul jokes Chase would throw her way.

Nico stirs and Karolina resists the urge of pressing a kiss to her lips. She watches as her girlfriend's face scrunches up adorably before her eyes slowly squint open.

“Morning,” Karolina whispers.

“Morning,” Nico murmurs, her voice rough with sleep, “What time is it?”

“Early,” she smiles, remembering a different morning in a different life, “Even for human standards.”

Nico smiles back at her, and then she presses her face into Karolina's neck, nose brushing against her jaw and tickling her. She tugs Nico even closer to her, until their whole bodies are touching, flushed together, and still it's not close to being enough.

Then again, she's coming to wonder if 'too close' is even a thing she can be to Nico.

“I'm going to kiss you now,” Nico's voice comes muffled by her skin.

“Please,” Karolina hears her own voice say, and then Nico's mouth was on hers and Karolina was too busy enjoying the way Nico's lips curl against hers to think of anything but Nico, Nico, Nico.

They stay curled into each other kissing until the first rays of sunshine filter through the shutters, lighting Nico in the most beautiful colours. She brushes her nose against Nico's. “Want to go watch the sunrise?”

“Who are you and what have you done to my Karolina?”

Karolina rolls her eyes, but her façade is broken from the very start by the wide grin on her face. “Your Karolina, uh?”

Nico's sleepy eyes shoot open all at once, her cheeks tinting red. “I... I don’t mean it in a caveman sort of way, or like I own you or--”

Karolina kisses her again, revelling in her ability to do so. Without pretences, without falsehoods, but just because she can- and if it's also a perfect way to stop Nico's mumbling, all the better. “Of course, yours. Who else's?”

Nico blush only becomes more prominent. “That's good. I wasn’t in the mood to get my heart broken at ass o'clock in the morning.”

Karolina chuckles before Nico continues. “And me, too.”

“Sorry?”

“I'm only yours, too.”

The words send Karolina's heart soaring, her stomach fluttering with butterflies the way it normally did when Nico said things like that.

“I'm so in love with you.”

She kisses her again, one kiss dissolving into the other until all that's left is Nico's mouth on hers, Nico's arms wrapped around her, Nico's hands in her hair. After a few blissful moments, she pulls away smiling at Nico's whining when she moves away.

She shoves the blankets off of them, getting up from the bed despite Nico's groan. “Come on, I wasn’t kidding about the sunrise.”

“I liked it better when you didn’t like mornings.”

“Maybe mornings with you aren’t so bad.”

Nico lets out a long, suffering sigh. “That's not fair. If you say stuff like that I have to get up. It's emotional manipulation or something.”

“You're so dramatic, God,” Karolina says, but bends down on the bed to kiss her anyway.

Nico hooks a hand behind her neck and brings her down on the bed again, falling unceremoniously on Nico. The kiss leaves her dazed and heavy-lidded, but soon Nico pulls away and leaves Karolina behind and breathless on the bed.

“Coming?”

Karolina squints her eyes playfully at her retreating figure with a smirk.

(As if she wouldn’t follow her anywhere without a second thought.)

She grabs the blanket off the bed and follows the love of her life out on their balcony, shivering against the wind. She hugs Nico from behind, wrapping the blanket around them. Nico turns a bit in her hold, just enough that she can hide her face in the crook of Karolina's neck.

She watches the first rays of sunrise bunch off Nico's face, and she's never put much stock in religion but she might reconsider after witnessing this.

“You're so beautiful.”

Nico shoves her half-heartedly. “Stop it.”

Karolina bounces back, kissing Nico's cheek swiftly. “I mean it. I can't lie about beauty, I’m an artist. It's like professional integrity or something.”

Nico pushes her away again, but there's a smile in her eyes. “You don’t need to keep flattering me, you already got the girl.”

She leans in playfully. “Oh, did I?”

“Yes,” Nico takes her hand and brings it to her lips. Karolina's heart soars in her chest. She's never noticed until now, but their hands fit together perfectly.

(She likes it.)  
  
Karolina takes Nico's chin into her other hand, bringing her lips to hers softly. “Good.”

“Yeah?”

She presses another peck to her girlfriend's cheek- because she can. “Yeah.”

They keep on looking at the slow rise of the sun in silence, and Karolina thinks she has never been as happy as in this moment- she thinks nobody has, ever, in the history of times, been happier than her in this moment.

She doesn’t think it can get better than this- or maybe not, since Nico seems to be living just to keep on surprising her.

“Hey, Karrie?”

“Yeah?”

“I want to marry you.”

She knows rationally, she knows, that those words should have sent her in a panic, should have filled her guts with dread, but instead, they had just made her warm, and more than a smidgen hopeful.

But she won't tell Nico that, not yet at least.

So Karolina huffs a laugh, feels it rumble deep in her chest and against Nico's back. “I hope you know you're playing deep into every U-haul joke ever written. We already live together, how much faster do you want to go?”

“I meant someday, you ass!”

“Sure you did. Who could blame you? I'm a catch.”

Nico huffs, crossing her arms over her chest and looking at Karolina with the grumpiest and cutest face ever made. “My mother certainly thinks so. I think she'd cry if I ever broke up with you.”

“She has good taste,” she can't help but keep on teasing her, as she dodges Nico's slap, “And it seems you already planned a wedding for us, so I think that particular scenario is nowhere near your mind.”

Nico's eyes narrow. “Well, now I might.”

“Dump me? Please. Who'd cook for you if you do?”

“Victor.”

She mocks gasps, her hand flying to her chest. “Too soon. And I’m much better looking than him.”

Nico rolls her eyes, but can't even keep the façade for more than a second as she leans up and kisses her. “Yeah, you are. Fine, guess I'll keep you.”

“And you'll marry me? I'm telling you now, I’m expecting you on your knees with a pretty ring next time you propose.”

“Yeah,” Nico says and kisses her again, “I'd never inflict your love on anyone else.”

“How charitable of you.”

Nico can't even keep up the façade for a second. “Nah. Pretty selfish.”

And for how much Karolina is enjoying their banter, their mouths could be put to much, much better use. She drops the blanket a notch and uses it to pull Nico gently to her until they're barely a millilitre apart.

“I like selfish. Want to know what else I like?”

Nico is breathless against her, pupils blown wide and making her pretty brown eyes look completely black. “What?”

“Come and find out,” she says, leaving a bruising kiss against her lips before sauntering towards their bedroom.

She hears a dull thud and a muttered curse and then Nico's hurried steps chasing after her, and she can't help but laugh.

And everything is right.

**

Two years later, Gert best woman's speech starts like this.

“We are gathered here today because these two idiots two years ago finally heeded my advice and talked it out. And, I guess that means I lost that bet. You two really couldn’t have waited like two months more to get married?”

A peal of laughter stops Gert, who waits for it to die down before winking at Karolina. She rolls her eyes in answer.

“So that's why we're here today, to aid two of my best friends in overturning a traditionally heteronormative pact on its back with their love. And for the open bar. Just kidding. We're only here for the bar.”

Karolina leans against her wife- her _wife,_ how miraculous is that?- to whisper in her ear. “Why did you let her be my best woman again?”

“If she wasn’t yours, she'd weasel into being mine. Amy would have never forgiven me for that,” Nico leans into her touch, “And it's cute.”

“You're cute,” she whispers against her skin, nuzzling her cheek softly. She's about to kiss Nico- her wife, her wife, her wife- when a voice interrupts her.

“Hey! Break it up you two! It's _my_ moment now, the two of you can be disgustingly cute later.”

“It's my wedding!”

“It's my speech!”

Nico laughs, and Karolina buries her face into her arms.

“As I was saying before I got so rudely interrupted, we're here today because these two are so incredibly in love that it just has to be celebrated. I didn’t use to believe in love like this when I was younger,” Gert pauses, eyes touching Chase one seat down her, before trusting her champagne flute into the air, “But I've never been gladder to be wrong. To Nico and Karolina!”

“To Nico and Karolina!” the room echoes back in what feels like a deafening shout.

She folds into Nico again, tilting her chin up. “To us.”

“To us,” Nico echoes back.

And then Karolina kisses her wife.

(She had never been gladder to be wrong, too.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this is it. 
> 
> thank you for sticking around long enought to see this train wreck reach its conclusion. on a side note i will never post something unfinished ever again, its just too stressful.
> 
> also how hilarious is it that karolina being on tabloids is now marvel canon? weve been blessed
> 
> if any of yall wants to scream at me you can also find me on tumblr @somniatoressinespe
> 
> til the next time.
> 
> and remember dumb characters are fun characters

**Author's Note:**

> guess whose one shot got so out of hand it's now a two shot (maybe three I haven't decided yet)? this gal's! 
> 
> get ready for more absurd content as soon as i get my shit together. as always, any kudos or comments are deeply treasured. 
> 
> cheers loves!


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